BAKED MEATS! 



OF THE 
FUNERAL. 




\ 



rOLLrCTION OP 

ESSAYS, POEMS, 

AND 

BANQUETS 



By private MILES O'REILLY, 

Late of the 47th Reg't, New York Volunteer 
Infantry, 10th Army Corps. 



COLLECTED, REVISED, AND EDITED, WITH THE REQUISITE CORRECTIONS OP 

PUNCTUATION, SPELLING, AND GRAMMAR. BY AN EX-COLONEL OF 

THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL''s DEPARTMENT, WITH WHOM 

THE PRIVATE FORMERLY SERVED AS LANCE 

CORPORAL OF ORDERLIES. 



New York: 
Carleton, Publisher^ 413 Broadway 



DCCC LXVI. 



T-^ 



.mB2> 



Entered, according; to Act of Congress, in the year 1S66, by 

CHARLES Q. IIALPINE, 

In the Clerk's Office of tho District Court of the United States for tlie 
Southern District of New York. 



The New York Printing Co., 
8i, 83, and 85 Centre Street. 



®0 

CHARLES C. YEATON 

of Brooklyn. 



PREFACE 



" SCfjc funeral baltrti meats 
Dtli coltihi furntsi) fortlj Ifje SiiftJtiinQ breakfast. 




O such a very iii- 
discrirainate col- 
lection of fugitive 
essays, and songs 
not quite so fugi- 
tive, hastily select- 
ed from the hasty scribblings of a 
year, and as hastily pitchforked to- 
gether in the double hurry and heat 
of travelling and journalism, what 
form of introduction can be requi- 
site ? The very decided popular 
success of a similar volume published last year, and 
now in its ninth or tenth edition, is the best apology 
that can be offered for the appearance of this, its suc- 
cessor. It may also be urged that the various parts of 
which it is composed, met with very distinct and gene- 
ral acceptance at the time of their original appearance ; 
a,nd that, as mementoes" of how public opinion was 
formed and ran during the closing stages of the war, 




VI PREFACE. 

and in regard to various topics of great interest not 
directly connected therewith, such as Fenianism, the 
Monroe Doctrine, Louis Napoleon's character, and so- 
forth, these fugitive essays and verses have been thought 
hy many to deserve some more permanent form of 
life. 

Everything in the subjoined volume, no matter how 
supposititiously credited in the text, is from the author's 
pen, with the exception of two translations into Latin 
of two of the author's l}Tics of the war, from the pen 
of his brother — one of the most eminent classical 
scholars of Trinity College, Dublin ; certain quotations 
from the official documents of Gens. Hunter and Grant 
connected with the war ; a ti'auslatiou into German of 
one of the same songs by Friedrich Gerstiicker, who is 
said to be a poet of high fame and character in his own 
particular part of Europe — wherever that may be ; and 
a translation of one of the odes of Horace j&'om the pen 
of General John A. Dix. 

While thus claiming the execution of all the balance 
of the volume, the author is anxious to make his ac- 
knowledgments for prolific suggestions and wise advice 
to ;Mr. James Gordon Bennett of the Herald, to whose 
shrewd common-sense, very peculiar and pungent humor, 
and unmense experience of the world, he stands indebt- 
ed for the origination of many, and the encouragement 
of all, of his recent literary projects. Mr. Bennett's 
mind is an electric battery, apparently never to be 
exhausted by the drafts made upon it for fresh ideas ; 
and he is one of those rare men whose ordinary conver- 
sation, in any half hour uf any day, can furnish hints 



PREFACE. Vll 

and ringing key-notes for the editorial labors of any- 
young journalist during tlie next week or fortnight. 

The chapter giving the song of " The Flaunting Lie," 
as it has been called, and the history thereof, with the 
other songs of the same series, will be read with inte- 
rest by all who remember how bitterly our honored 
friend, Mr. Horace Greeley, was assailed for his imputed 
authorship of that much misquoted and garbled lyric 
during the last ten years, and more especially during the 
recent Presidential canvass. For evil or 'for good, that 
song has now passed into history ; and in connexion 
therewith the author would only say, that he was at all 
times ready to avow its authorship, but was restrained 
by the suggestion of Mr. Greeley that in "politics, a lie 
well stuck to is as good as truth ;" and that, no matter 
what avowals were made in reo-ard to the sono-, Mr. 
Greeley's enemies would still continue to hold him 
responsible therefor, and to garble and misquote such 
verses of it as might seem to suit their purposes. 

The long chapter on Fenianism is preserved as a 
historical relic of some interest, no matter what may be 
the fate of that curious and erratic movement. It was 
this article — originally published in the Herald and 
thence copied in full by the London Times^ and a ma- 
jority of the leading papers of Great Britain and 
Europe — that first called any serious pubhc attention 
to the existence of such an Order ; and it was from the 
notoriety thus given that the Brotherhood more than 
trebled their numbers in the six months next following 
its publication ; and that a movement previously dying 
out from want of activity and ventilation, became at 



Vni PREFACE. 

once one of tlie actual, if not avowed elements, more 
or less operative, in the international politics of France, 
Great Britain, and tlie United States. 

For tlie rest, tlie volume must be taken as each 
reader will find it — sometimes humorous, sometimes 
grave, but always with an earnest and wholesome pur- 
pose, as the author hopes. There are in it some few 
chapters of personal recollections of the war — only a 
prelude to a larger and more careful work of the same 
character, which the writer will endeavor to get time 
for collecting and writing during the present year. 
There are in it, also, many poems and songs of greater 
or less merit, nearly all written within the past year, 
save " The Union Convoy " and the series of " The 
Flaunting Lie ;" and of these, as well, with the best 
or least bad of his other songs previously published in 
book-form and in the newspapers and magazines, it is 
the author's hope to have a handsomely illustrated 
volume made up for next Christmas. 



The Author. 



Office N. y. Citizen, 
New York, January 20th, IS 



THE UNION CONYOY. 

[January 1st, I860.] 

The night is dark and bodeful as through the gloom we sail, 
And the ground-swell of the moaning sea gives warning of 

the gale ; 
The nearest vessels of the fleet our eyes can scarce discern, 
Though by their creaking cordage that some are near we 

learn. 
Ho ! Signal-master, leap aloft, and from the topmost spar, 
*' The Convoy is in danger" — flash the signal fast and far! 
Let us know what vessels answer to the old and honored 

sign, 
Count the signals reappearing in the Convoy's ordered line ; 

We have sailed the seas together, 
Linked in many a common fight, 

And accursed be all the omens 
That say we part to-night ! 

Bright was the glorious morning which saw the Convoy 

start, 
Freighted with all that human hope makes precious to the 

heart ; 
Bright were our days of summer, while still as riches grew, 
Another vessel joined us, and we hailed another crew ; 
A smiling heaven above us, an open path to steer, 
New treasures ever dawning in the isles we drew anear — 



4 THE UNION CONVOY. 

O, peaceful was the voyage, or when we met a foe, 
All struck to guard the common rights with one avenging 
blow ; 

But Signal-master, hasten. 

Flash the words in rays of light — 
" What vessels of the Convoy 
Part company to-night ? " 

Great admirals have led us, great names our records bear 
Of those who shaped our destinies, and taught us how to 

dare ; 
Great captains we have numbered — each name itself a star, 
Bright as those answering signals which flash from spar to 

spar ! 
Through many a tempest Washington has paced the heaving 

deck, 
And after many a battle-hour his orders cleared the wreck ; — 
Yea,, oft beneath our gliding keels the mountain waves 

have swelled, 
While Jackson's hand with iron grip the foremost tiller 
held. 

But now we have no Captain 

In this dark and bodeful night, 
Yet — Heaven be praised ! how quickly 
The signals leap to light. 

Let us only keep together and in vain the waves may swell, 

We shall flash the joyous signal to the Convoy — " All is 
well ! " 

Though the skies be black with tempest and the seas run 
high and fast, 

While the whistling gale allows no sail to bend the groan- 
ing mast, 



THE UNION CONVOY. 5 

Yet — so the Good Gods whisper — while the skies their 

influence pour, 
A. common path the fleet shall steer, a common flag adore ; 
If mutineers would seize our ships, they shall dangle from 

the spars, 
And from every topmast yet shall stream the banner of the 
stars ! 

No cloud while we together sail, 

Their radiance can eclipse ; 
For the Convoy knows no danger 
But collision of the ships ! 



HONOE TO OUR HEROES. 

GRAND BANQUET IN HONOR OF GENS. SHERMAN 
AND THOMAS. 

[From the New York Herald, Jan. 1st, 1865.] 

DINNER OF THE NEW YORK NATIONAL CLUB. 

At the entertainment given last evening at the 
Maison Doree, by the members of the New York 
National Club, to celebrate the successes of Gene- 
rals Sherman and Thomas, there was quite a select 
and brilliant gathering of military and other cele- 
brities. All the arrangements for the feast were 
of the choicest, and the company seemed to be in 
excellent spirits for appreciating the entertain- 
ment, both intellectual and physical, to which they 
were invited. The walls, pictures, and chandeliers 
were beautifully decorated with wreaths, stars, and 
crosses of evergreens and flowers : and there were 
other indications on the tables that Christmas and 
the holiday season had not been forgotten. 

SOME OF the DISTINGUISHED GUESTS. 

Prominent among the military guests we noticed 
General Robert Anderson, Major-General John 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 7 

A. Dix, and two members of his staff; together 
•with Generals "W. S. Hancock, Hunter, Hooker, 
W. F. Smith, Hartsuff, Butterfield, Averell, Gal- 
ium, Webb, Colonel James A. Hardie, Inspector- 
General, and several minor lights of the profession 
militaire. Of civilians and naval officers there was 
a choice but not inconvenient number present, 
covers having been ordered only for sixty, 
and this limit being adhered to, despite a very 
strong outside pressure to have the margin 
extended. 

Among those in the non-military class we noticed 
Messrs. Thurlow Weed, John Yan Buren, Gover- 
nor Andrew, of Massachusetts ; Captains Drayton 
and Daniel Ammen, United States Navy ; W^m. F. 
Havemeyer, James T. Brady, Senator Conness, of 
California; John A. Kennedy, Judge Ingraham, 
Charles A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War; 
Royal Phelps, the Rev. Morgan Dix, Robert B. 
Roosevelt, Edwards Pierrepont, Richard O'Gorman, 
Sydney H. Gay, Captain Worden, United States 
Navy ; Edward Cooper, Hamilton Fish, William 
Stuart, Thomas J. Durant, A. T. Stewart, Thos. 
C. Acton, Captain Rodgers, United States Navy ; 
Clarence Seward, Henry Ward Beecher, Professor 
Doremus, Henry Hilton, Samuel L. M. Barlow, 
Charles Nordhoff, Henry J. Raymond, Colonel 
Sandford, of the telegraph companies; Edwin 
Booth ; Vice-President elect, Andrew Johnson, of 



8 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

Tennessee; and Captain G. V. Scott, Assistant 
Secretary of the Navy. 

OBJECT OF THE DINNER CELEBRATION. 

The cards of invitation from the Kew York 
National Club set forth that this dinner was to 
celebrate the successful termination of the first 
problem of General W. T. Sherman's last and 
greatest campaign, by the capture of Savannah ; and 
the overwhelming destruction of the rebel forces 
under General Hood by General Geo. H. Thomas ; 
as also to express the hope of all true patriots, 
irrespective of party, that, "through the trium- 
phant energy of our military and naval heroes, 
this desolating civil war may soon be brought 
into a condition that will allow a liberal margin 
to statesmanship and diplomacy for the settlement 
of all differences between the North and South on 
the one essential basis of a restored Union." 

OPENING SPEECH BY PRINCE JOHN VAN BUREN 
— THE HEALTH OF GENERAL SHERMAN. 

After full justice had been done to the viands 
— Dodworth's band discoursing eloquent music 
during the progress of the feast — the distinguished 
Prince John Yan Buren, as President of the 
Club, gave notice that there would be no succes- 
sion of " regular toasts " that evening, this habit 



HONOB TO OUR HEROES. 9 

having become a mere form, which had lost all 
significance, and only tending to bore convivial 
assemblages with too copious streams of eloquence 
elaborately rehearsed. They had met to acknow^- 
ledge their indebtedness to two noble Generals, 
and to express hopes for their continued success. 
He would therefore, now propose, in due order of 
seniority, the health of that gallant officer. General 
William Tecumseh Sherman, and call upon the 
honored friend on his left — General Eobert Ander- 
son, of Fort Sumter — to respond in behalf of the 
absent hero. (Loud applause, the whole company 
rising and drinking the health of General Sherman 
w4th " three times three and a tiger," Dodworth's 
band striking up, ^'Lo, the Conquering Hero 
Comes," and "Hail Columbia.") 

General Anderson, whose rising was hailed with 
fervent demonstrations of applause, spoke slowly, 
and as if still suffering from the effects of pro- 
tracted illness ; but he spoke with an unrivalled 
tenderness of sincerity, his plea for the foundation 
of a Soldier's Home, towards the close of his 
remarks, having in all its words, accents, and ges- 
tures, a most cogent impressiveness. 

GENERAL ANDERSON'S SPEECH. 

General Anderson declared it to be the proudest 
thought of his life that he had been the humble 
means, under Divine Providence, of bringing into 
1* 



10 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

early prominence before the country the two 
generals whose names were at the present moment 
most gratefully on the lips of every patriot — he 
referred to his old lieutenant, "Wm. T. Sherman, 
whose health they had just honored; and to that 
noblest of all noble Southrons now in the active 
service of our country, General George H. Thomas, 
of Virginia. (Applause.) Early in the war, when 
assigned to the command of his own native State, 
Kentucky, General Anderson felt that his nervous 
system had been injured by the enormous weight 
of anxieties and responsibilities which had pressed 
upon him for the two months preceding the attack 
upon his forces in Fort Sumter. He was only over- 
ruled into accepting the command by the represen- 
tations of such noble patriots of his native State as 
the late John J. Crittenden, Mr. Leslie Coombs, 
Secretary Guthrie, and others of like stamp, who 
expressed to him their belief that his name might 
be made useful in heightening the loyalty of those 
Kentuckians who were already for the Union, and 
of turning into the true path many who were still 
wavering or in doubt. (Loud applause.) Thus 
pressed, he accepted ; but, fearing that his health 
might again break down, it was the primary con- 
dition of his taking the command in question, that 
his tried and honored friend, General William T. 
Sherman, should be assigned to him as his next 
in rank. (Applause.) Sherman had served for 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 11 

years under him as lieutenant of his company ; 
and Greneral George H. Thomas, he was proud to 
say, had been a lieutenant in the same regiment. 
In regard to General Thomas, he desired to 
claim some credit, but only for having expedited 
the inevitable. Men of the stamp of George H. 
Thomas push themselves upward and onward in 
times like these as irresistibly as water seeks its 
own level ; or, to use a metaphor more appropri- 
ate to a certain alleged portion of the aristocracy 
of to-day, as inevitably as a great petroleum foun- 
tain underneath the earth, will bubble to the sur- 
face and make all rich around it. (Loud applause 
and laughter.) But it was through his humble 
ministry that General Thomas, early in the war, 
received an opportunity worthy of his talents ; 
and the manner of this incident he would now 
relate. He (General Anderson) saw with pain in 
the early days of the war, a disposition on the 
part of certain prominent friends of the Adminis- 
tration to look with suspicion upon officers of 
Southern birth, who still remained faithful to the 
old flag. From the South himself, he felt this 
keenly ; and at an early interview with the Presi- 
dent, having stated his views, he asked that he 
might be given a brigadier's commission for George 
H. Thomas — (applause) — an officer for whose un- 
alterable loyalty he would answer with his head ; 
and whose natural and acquired qualities of sol- 



12 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

diership he esteemed, after long opportunities for 
judging, as second to those of no officer in our 
own or any other army. (Loud applause, in the 
midst of which Greneral Butterfield proposed " The 
health of General Thomas," which was drunk 
with enthusiasm, and with all the honors.) Gene- 
ral Anderson then regretted that the condition 
of his health would not allow him to review the 
splendid career of General Sherman — a task which 
he found himself obliged to delegate to younger, 
and more active heads. lie knew Sherman well, 
and loved him with all his heart; and would only 
express the hope, before resuming his seat, that 
the great and generous American people, filled 
with thanks to the Giver of all Goodness for the 
victories which had recently blessed our arms, 
would now make their gratitude take the practical 
form of erecting a great "National Soldiers' Home" 
for our crippled and disabled veterans, as the 
noblest and most appropriate monument they could 
erect in commemoration of the Divine mercies for 
which we have all, this day, so much cause to be 
thankful. (Applause.) The General then recited 
the labors he had undergone in procuring the pre- 
sent Soldiers' Home at Washington to be created, 
regretting that it had been located upon a misera- 
bly contracted patch of ground, near Washington, 
and that it consequently could afford no means of 
giving any healthful and self-supporting employ- 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 13 

ment to its inmates. He wished to see the first 
great National Soldiers' Home, to be erected by 
popular action, located either in the vicinity of 
Carlisle, Pa., or near the beautiful Adirondack 
region of New York. It should have at least a 
thousand acres of land attached to its endowment; 
and with this properly cultivated by the easy 
labor of the inmates, and with the trifling pensions 
now allowed to them by government, such an 
establishment would be self-supporting, and need 
make no appeal for any further contribution. As 
to the present Soldiers' Home near Washington, 
it should be purchased by Congress as a residence 
for the President and such Cabinet officers as might 
choose to reside there — the present miserably un- 
healthy and contracted White House becoming 
merely the Presidential suite of public offices. 
With the money obtained from Congress by such 
a sale, the land he wanted for his new, popular and 
National Soldiers' Home might be readily pur- 
chased. In this connection he desired to express 
his indebtedness to the various papers of New 
York, and to the New York Herald more parti- 
cularly, for the cordial, generous, and active sup- 
port they had given to this project. Himself a 
disabled soldier, he thanked all the conductors of 
our press, in the name of his crippled comrades, 
for their disinterested humanity in this matter. 
Thanking the members of the Club and his fellow- 



M HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

guests for tlie patience with whicli they had heard 
him, General Anderson resumed his seat in the 
midst of deafening applause. 

COLONEL M'MAHON's SONG — ITS AUTHORSHIP 
STILL IN DOUBT. 

Lieutenant-Colonel Martin T. McMahon, late 
Adjutant-General on the staff of the ever-glorious 
and lamented Major-General Sedgwick, was next 
introduced to the company by President Yan 
Buren, who said that as they had all met to cele- 
brate General Sherman's success, he would be 
glad for them to hear from his friend, the Colonel, 
who had a most excellent voice, a song he had 
just received from Sherman's army, via the Ogee- 
chee — the authorship of which was pretty clearly, 
though not yet quite definitely, traced to a young 
cavalry oflGicer of distinction, and holding an im- 
portant command in Sherman's army (Loud 
applause and cheers). Thus introduced, Colonel 
McMahon, a very fine-looking young soldier, and 
one possessing a record of service as enviable as 
his voice and other social talents, proceeded to 
give the following to an original accompaniment, 
which was played for him on the guitar by Gene- 
ral William Averell, of the cavalry, who proved 
himself a most accomplished master of that instru- 
ment — a true troubadour of the old Provence type, 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 15 

alike familiar with serenade and sabre. He called 
it: 

THE SONG OF 

A pillar of fire by night, 
A pillar of smoke by day, 
Some hours of march — then a halt to fight, 
And so we hold our way. 
Chorus — Some hours of march, &c. 

Over mountain and plain and stream, 
To some bright Atlantic bay, 
With our arms aflash in the morning beam, 
We hold our festal way. 
Chorus — With our arms aflash, &c. 

There is terror wherever we come, 
There is terror and wild dismay, 
When they see the Old Flag and hear the drum 
Announce us on the way. 
Chorus — When they see the Old Flag, &c. 

Never unlimber a g-un 

For those villainous Hues in gray 
Draw sabres ! and at 'em upon the run ! 
'Tis thus we clear our way. 
Chorus — Draw sabres ! and at 'em, &c. 

The loyal, who long have been dumb. 
Are loud in their cheers to-day, 
And the old men out on their crutches come, 
To see us hold our way. 
Chorus — And the old men out, &c. 



16 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

Around us, in rear and flanks, 
Their futile squadrons play ; 
With a sixty mile front of steady ranks, 
We hold our checkless way. 
Chorus — With a sixty mile front, &c. 

Hear the spattering fire that starts 
From the woods and copses gray ; 
There is just enough fighting to quicken our hearts, 
As we frolic along the way. 
Chorus — There is just enough fighting, &c. 

Upon different roads abreast 
The heads of our columns gay. 
With fluttering flags, all forward pressed, 
Hold on their conquering way. 
Chorus — With fluttering flags, &c. 

Ah, traitors ! who bragged so bold 
In the sad war's early day. 
Did nothing predict ye should ever behold 
The Old Flag come this way ? 
Chorus — Did nothing predict, &c. 

By Heaven I 'tis a gala march, 
'Tis a picnic, or a play ; 
Of all our long war 'tis the crowning arch ; 
Hip, hip ! for Sherman's way ! 
Chorus — Of all our long war, &c. 

The verses, sung with great melody, fire, and 
feeling, were warmly received ; and it may gratify 
the friends of tlie unknown author to be here 
informed that, in response to a brief but telling 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 17 

and witty address from Senator Conness, of Cali- 
fornia, the health of the author of " Sherman's 
Way," received the complimentary and enthusi- 
astic baptism of some of the best French and 
Khenish vintages to be found upon Manhattan 
Island. 

LEARNED AND ELOQUENT ADDRESS OF MAJOR- 
GENERAL JOHN A. DIX. 

General Dix, being loudly called for, remarked 
that it was but rarely, since re-entering the army, 
that he had found either time or inclination for 
post-prandial speeches. lie was out of practice, 
and might possibly be dull ; but he promised he 
should not be prolix. lie was not one of those 
who looked upon war as an unmixed evil. It 
cost much pain and waste, but these were more 
than compensated by its calling forth all that is 
heroic in our natures : 

Si tritura absit paleis sunt abdita grana, 
Nos crux mundanis separat a paleis, — 

or " for the benefit of country members." — As the 
precious corn is separated from worthless straw 
only by severe threshing, so by crosses and afflic- 
tions the true life of a nation is separated from its 
chaff. (Applause.) It required the dark days of 
a Eepublic to bring out such hero-characters as we 



18 HOKOR TO OUR HEROES. 

have found in Sherman, Thomas, Farragut, and 
that youngest but not least of the jewels gilding 
the bright crown of our war — Lieutenant Gush- 
ing, of the navy. (Loud applause.) These names 
are lights of our country, emulating in lustre the 
stars under which they fight, and capable of chal- 
lenging — were history truly written — the demi- 
gods of mythology to a comparison of records : 

Emilia nomina stellis, 
Nomina qusepossent solicitare deos! 

Greneral Dix desired to endorse the eloquent 
and practical appeal of his honored friend, Gene- 
ral Anderson, in behalf of founding a great 
National Soldiers' Home as the most fitting monu- 
ment with which the American people can record 
their appreciation of the services of Generals 
Sherman and Tliomas, and their gratitude to the 
Heavenly Father who has vouchsafed so much 
success to the efforts of their enterprise and genius. 
If there be any objects which should appeal to the 
public sympathy with irresistible force, it is such 
as we have daily presented in all the highways and 
byways of our land — crippled soldiers who have 
fought the battles of their country, yet are now 
reduced to sit on stoops and by the wayside, 
exposing their truncated limbs and honorable 
scars while asking for an oboliis. (Emotion and 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 19 

applause.) Every time these sights came before 
him — and they came too often — he was reminded 
of those most touching lines of the Latin poet : 

Per ego has lachrymas, dextramque tuam te, 
Si quidqaam te merui, fait aut tibi quidquam 
Dulce meum miserere mei ! 

The soldier in his day of strength is a noble 
object. Satisfied of the justice of his cause, and 
filled with the thought that the peace, honor, and 
well-being of his country depend upon his prow- 
ess, he is regardless of death, and rushes upon 
hostile swords : 



Haud timet mortem, cupit ire in ipsos 
Obvius enses! 



But when recoiling, fiiint with loss of blood, from 
the tempestuous onset, holding up in his left hand 
the shattered right arm that never again may 
strike for the cause as dear to him as life, or car- 
ried rearward with a broken thigh on one of those 
canvas stretchers already purple with the blood 
of dozens who have pressed it before him—Oh, 
then, if there be hearts in those at home to feel 
grateful for self-sacrifices, they should surround 
his couch of pain with everything that can miti- 
gate his sufferings ; and as he issues, alive but for 



20 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

ever crippled, from the door of the hospital, they 
should be there to take him in their arms and 
comfort him with the assurance that the Nation in 
whose cause he has given the glorj of his man- 
hood, will provide him with an honorable and 
happy home during the balance of his life. (Ap- 
plause and deep emotion.) Occupied as our chief 
authorities are in the main business of crushing 
the armed forces of the rebellion, allowance must 
be made for their neglect or inability to attend to 
such matters of after consideration and detail as 
this of a Soldiers' Home. They are troubled with 
many things ; nunc hcec nunc ilia cogitant i and they 
very possibly feel that while all their energies 
are directed to the front, the care of those who are 
permanently disabled in the nation's cause should 
be freely and proudly undertaken by the non-bel- 
ligerent classes of our people. (Cries of " Hear, 
hear." A voice — " We accept the trust.") 

General Dix had been led aside from his pur- 
pose of speaking directly to the object which had 
called them together ; but if he knew General 
Sherman well, and he thought he did so, that offi- 
cer would be the last to grudge any moments taken 
from his own praise to plead the cause of the gal- 
lant men who had been riddled with balls and 
pierced with bayonets since General Anderson first 
heard the hollow booming of the guns which 
announced the birth — monstrara horrendum^ ingens^ 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 21 

atque informe — of this rebellion. (Loud applause, 
General Anderson bowing.) It was a good thing 
to praise men publicly who had been publicly 
deserving. It strengthened virtue, and gave it the 
additional stimulus of admiring sympathy : 

Laudataque virtus 
Crescit, et immensum gloria calcar habet. 

Or, again — for the benefit of members from the ru- 
ral districts — applauded virtue grows by praise, and 
glory has a mighty impulse. (Loud cheers.) This 
impulse a generous people would not fail to supply 
abundantly to such true hero-hearts as Farragut 
and Sherman. (Loud applause.) The one has 
proved that an iron-clad admiral is superior to an 
iron-clad navy, illi robur et ces triplex — (applause and 
laughter) — while the other, like some new Colos- 
sus, has bestridden our continent from the moun- 
tain ranges of Tennessee to the long, shelving 
shores of the Atlantic, the thunderbolts of war in 
his right hand, and the olive branch of peace in 
the other, offering its shadow and protection to all 
who would again swear fealty to the banner which 
it is his noble mission to uphold. (Loud applause.) 
Before concluding. General Dix would briefly 
refer to his order directing our troops to pursue all 
rebel burglars and cut-throats across the Canadian 
frontier, if essential to their capture. (Shouts of 



22 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

applause, tlie health of General Dix being pro- 
posed by a dozen voices, and receiving all the 
honors as if by universal impulse.) That order, 
they were aware, for which he felt proud to receive 
their plaudits, had been revoked ; and to the deci- 
sion which revoked it, he, as a soldier, bowed with 
all due humility. (Peals of derisive laughter, 
the General giving this last sentence, as Artemus 
Ward would say, " with intense suckkasm.") 
But in his private capacity he respectfully differed 
from those in authority over him as to the merits 
of the question when judged by the standard of 
international law. (Loud Cheers.) " The right 
of hot pursuit," as it is called, or as Grotius ex- 
presses it, dumfervet opus^ is one of the best esta- 
blished in the code of international obligations. 
It was asserted by General Jackson against the 
Spaniards in regard to the frontiers of Florida; 
and it remained for our present Secretary of State 
to repudiate this great democratic authority in 
regard to Great Britain. (Patriots applaud again, 
with some hisses for the " little silver bell.") Gene- 
ral Dix had no doubt that the policy which 
revoked his order might be abundantly justified 
by considerations of immediate expediency : but, 
if so, the revocation should have avowed as its 
motive a mere temporary pressure, rendering the 
present enforcement of the right impolitic, while 
broadly reaffirming as a principle "the right of 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 23 

hot pursuit " which had formed the basis of his 
order. (Ringing applause, and cries of " Good, 
good." " We think as you do." " Their neutra- 
lity be damned," &c.) General Dix felt that, 
though the order had been revoked, it yet had its 
effect, and that effect a good one. He felt that in 
it he had reared himself a monument which should 
not pass away — Exegi monumentum cere jperennius 
— and was already satisfied that the American 
people would do justice to his motives, and that 
history would date a new era in our relations with 
England from the promulgation of that order, in 
which he was happy to add, the honorable Secre- 
tary of War had m.ost cordially supported him. 
(Intense applause, Mr. Brady proposing " Success 
to the Fenian Brotherhood : the day of our war 
with England enrols every able-bodied true Irish- 
man, both here and in Canada, under the banner 
of the Union !") General Dix felt that he had 
detained them longer than he had intended, and 
yet had done but scanty justice to his subject. 
For his classical quotations he pleaded the exam- 
ple of his Commander-in-Chief, the President ; and 
all who heard him should believe that it was not 
the wish to do full justice to his subject which was 
wanting, but the long want of practice in speeches 
of this kind. Non deerat voluntas sed facidtas. 
(Loud applause, amid which the General resumed 
his seat, being warmly complimented by Messrs. 



24 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

Bradj, O'Gorman, Yan Buren, Doremus, Cham- 
berlain, Frederick Hudson, and many others.) 

AN ARMY AND NAVY TOAST — HEALTHS OF FAR- 

RAGUT AND THOMAS. 

The joint healths of Admiral Farragut and 
General George H. Thomas were now formally 
proposed by General Hancock, and were drunk 
with all the honors, the whole company standing 
up, waving their napkins and cheering until the 
room rang again, while the band played elo- 
quently 

" Our army and our navy for ever, 
And the flag of the red, white, and blue I" 

A SONG FROM GOV. ANDREW, OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

Apropos to the toast they had just drunk, Mr. 
Yan Buren would have much pleasure in calling 
upon their honored guest. Governor Andrew of 
Massachusetts, for a song or sentiment, earnestly 
hoping it might be the former. In addition to a 
memory so stored with songs and poems, that 
those who knew him could only wonder how he 
found room in his head for the many thousand 
other interests which so constantly pressed upon 
him, and of which, in all situations, he had proved 
himself so complete a master, — their friend, the 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 25 

Governor, was blessed with a voice of unusual 
compass, flexibility, and culture; and although 
aware that he could rarely be tempted to display 
his vocal powers in public, the Chairman would 
still hope that the greatness of this occasion, their 
desire to pay all possible honor to the names that 
have been introdaiced, and the semi-private cha- 
racter of the entertainment, might induce their dis- 
tinguished guest to relax his usual rule of silence. 
(Loud applause, and vehement urgings followed, 
with which Governor Andrew at last good-na- 
turedly complied.) 

The Governor is one of those broad-chested, 
large-throated men, with a noble baritone voice ; 
and although he is, by repeated election, the special 
representative of a Puritan State, few of our most 
light-hearted youth could have given the following 
words with more drollery or fire. 

" Play," he said, sending by one of the waiters to 
the bandmaster; " play that one of Moore's Melo- 
dies called 'Fill the Bumper Fair,' and I'll try 
what I can do with it. Gentlemen," he added, 
addressing the company, with a smile of infectious 
merriment ; " You must be sure you never let my 
blue-light, Old Bay State constituents know what 
I have been doing." (Loud cries of " They shall 
never know it from us," with a suggestion from 
Colonel Hardie that General Dix should issue an 
order to " shoot on the spot " any reporter who 



26 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

should be guilty of making public this deeply in- 
teresting incident. (Loud laughter.) 

Governor Andrew then cleared his throat with 
a glass of Muscatelle, and sang as follows. He 
called it his 



SONG OF THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS. 

Fill the bumper high. 

Showing, without shrinking, 
Patriotic joy 

By patriotic drinking ! 
Sherman's noble host 

Well they keep tiieir promise, 
But, for a bully toast, 

We drink the health of Thomas 1 
Chorus — Fill the bumper high, &c. 

Bumpers to the brink ! 

Scarce can we determine 
Whether we should drink 

To Thomas or to Sherman ? 
We cannot pause or wait, 

'Tis cold and wintry weather, 
And so, to end debate, 

We'll drink 'em both together ! 
Chorm — Fill the bumper high, &c. 

With them let us mix 

Others you are wishing — 
Here's to those naval bricks, 

Farraout and Cusliins: I 



HONOK TO OUR HEROES. 27 

May our heroes' choice, 

O'er land and ocean straying, 
Blend as does my voice 

With the music playing I 
Chorus — Fill the bumper high, &c. 

Fill again — who recks? 

Our last shall be a thumper ; 
To Stanton's beard and specs 

We pledge the present bumper ! 
Quick I the bottles pass ! 

Old Time is shpping from us ; 
Let's pledge a final glass 

To Farragut and Thomas ! 
Chorus — Fill the bumper high, &c. 

A BAY STATE TRIUMPH — HOW THE SONG WAS RE- 
CEIVED. 

No song that we have heard for many years 
could be pronounced, including all its accessories, 
a more decided triumph than this ; all the com- 
pany, with the exception of the two reverend 
gentlemen present, joining enthusiastically in the 
chorus, which was led by Captain Barstow, A.D.C., 
and Messrs. Theodore and K. B. Eoosevelt, who 
have voices of great compass and delightful cul- 
ture. On its conclusion a number of gentlemen 
pressed round Governor Andrew with congratula- 
tions and thanks, prominent among whom we 
noticed Dr. Duvant, of the Pacific Eailroad ; Col. 



28 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

Frank E. Howe, of the New England Eelief 
Eooms ; Colonel Sandford, of the American Tele- 
graph ; and S. L. M. Barlow, Esq., gold controller 
and democratic politician, of Madison Square and 
"William street. 

SLIGHT ODOR OF COPPER— MR. o'GORMAN SPEAKS. 

Mr. Eichard 0' Gorman, being now called for, 
desired briefly to remark that, in every word that 
had fi^illen from the gallant and learned gentleman 
(bowing to Greneral Dix) who had addressed them 
just previous to the pleasure (bowing to Governor 
Andrew) they had just had, he (Mr. O'Gorman) 
desired most cordially to concur — (applause) — ^per- 
haps most cordially in those portions of the Gene- 
ral's glowing peroration which referred to the 
"right of hot pursuit'' over British soil; and to 
General Sherman as holding the " ohve branch" 
in one hand, while wielding a sword in the other. 
(Applause, and some dissent.) The olive was a 
brin}^ vegetable, which, to-night, they had all found 
pleasant with their wine (applause and merriment) ; 
but about the metaphorical "olive branch," to 
which General Dix had made allusion, no trace of 
bitterness, or "the salt rheum of grief," could be 
found. It was the healer of miseries ; the only 
fan by which eventually the briny tears of our 
civil discord could be dried away. There was a 



HONOE TO OUR HEROES. 29 

time for the sword and a time for the oKve branch, 



and he rejoiced in the victories they had met to 
celebrate. But, brilliant as were our late suc- 
cesses, he feared they could never be made to blos- 
som into the peace of a restored Union, unless 
properly supported by liberal and catholic proffers 
of amnesty, oblivion, and the restoration of civil 
rights. (Applause and some dissent.) 

OIL (" OLIVE ") ox THE TROUBLED WATERS. 

The Chairman desired to state that, if he were 
called upon to express his opinions, he would con- 
cur with every sentiment uttered by the last speak- 
er, whom he hoped to see elected Counsel to the 
Corporation next year. But as they had met to 
pay honor to two gallant and successful soldiers, 
and as he saw around him men of all political 
creeds, it might be best to avoid the discussion of 
such topics ; and he would therefore call upon 
Captain Blake, of the headquarters in Bleecker 
street, for one of those humorous Irish songs 
which had made him so famous in the social circle. 
All knew that the Blakes, Burkes, and Bodkins, 
were the three great Gal way families; and he 
would beg to introduce to the company his friend 
Captain Blake as 'a wortliy representative of that 
Milesian ilk. 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

-A SONG FOR 
HIS SUPPER. 

Captain Blake, who is tall and sinewj, with a 
Wellington nose, and hair of that peculiar tinge 
now so popular at the Parisian Court and with all 
our hairdressers, at once complied with the request — 
only hesitating a moment as to whether he should 
"rowl out "for them the Gruiskeen Lawn^ the 
Shann Van Voght, or the jSuilj Suil^ Sail Aroon, in 
his native Irish tongue ; or the " Groves of 
Blarney " in Anglo-Saxon. Being told, however, 
that, after the flood of foreign learning in a pre- 
ceding speech, the company would not now object 
to a little English, and learning also that the 
" Groves of Blarney " must be held in reserve to 
be sung by Judge John R. Brady, the gallant 
Captain decided upon another lyric — supposed to 
be from the pen of Private Miles O'Reilly, 
Forty-seventh regiment, New York Volunteers — 
a copy of which we subjoin. He sang it to the 
air of " How happy could I be with either," and it 
was called : 

MY STHRONG WAKENESS FOR WIDDIES. 

Arrah, none o' your boordin' school misses, 
Your sweet, timid craytliurs for me, 

Who rave about cupid an' blisses. 
Yet know not what ayther may be ; 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 81 

I don't feel at all sintimintal, 

For romance I care niver a rap, 
But give me a plump, jolly, an' gintle 

Young widdy in weeds an' a cap. 

To her I would offer my juty, 

For in thrulh all belief it exceeds, 
To see how the blossom o' beauty 

Is hoigthened by peepin' from weeds I 
She is armed cap-a-pie for the sthruggle, 

To her cap I a captive belong, 
And the charm of her shly httle ogle 

Is a challenge to coortship an' song I 

The thremors o' girlhood are over, 

Love's blossom has ripened to fruit, 
An' her firsht love, ashleep undher clover, 

Is the sile where my passion sthrikes root ; 
It is pleasant to know the departed 

Was tindherly cared tD the last. 
An' that she will not die broken-hearted 

If I should pop off jast as fasti 

Her timper is never so restive, 

Her juty she knows; an' a shape 
Is never so sweetly suggestive 

As whin it peeps out undher crape ; 
The girl wears wan ring whin she marries 

In proof she all others discards, 
But the widdy- wife, wiselier, carries 

A pair o' these marital guards. 

An' so, none o' your boordin' school misses, 
Your sweet, timid era^thurs for me, 



82 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

Who rave about ciipid an' blisses, 
Yet know not what ayther may be ; 

I don't feel at all sintimintal, 
JSTor care I for Byron a rap — 

So give me a plump, jolly, an' gintle 
Young widdy in weeds an' a cap ! 

Every stanza of the foregoing called forth its 
full share of applause and merriment, Prince John 
Yan Buren remarking that a copy should at once 
be sent to General Joe Hooker, who, as he heard, 
was about marrying a Mv widow hailing from 
Cincinnati, Chicago, or some of our western vil- 
lages. 

GEN. HOOKER ABOUT ASSUMING- A NEW COMMAND. 

Senator Conn ess begged to correct the honor- 
able gentleman who had spoken last. The in- 
tended bride of "Fighting Joe" was young, ar- 
dent, beautiful, and in the first sweet roseate flush 
of her maiden purity. "She loved Joe for the 
perils he had passed, and he loved her because she 
pitied him." The marriage would take place be- 
fore the crocus broke through the snows of our 
earliest spring ; and General Hooker, lifted into 
the seventh heaven of his desires, would have 
another " battle above the clouds." (Eoars of 
laughter.) 

Mr. O'Gorman only desired to protest against 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 33 

the quotation Mr. Conness had used — a quotation 
from the scandalous plav of Othello, describing 
the marriage of a colored soldier to the white 
daughter of a Yenetian Senator. He regarded 
that play as the earliest " miscegenation document " 
of our last campaign for the Presidency. (Loud 
laughter and applause, the Kev. Mr. Beecher cry- 
ing "A hit — a most palpable hit!") 

SECRETARY STANTON ON THE RAMPAGE — HIS LET- 
TER TO MR. BRADY. 

In response to repeated invitations, Mr. James 
T. Brady said that he had no speech to make, but 
would gladly read to them a letter from Secretary 
Stanton, which he had received just as he was 
leaving home that evening to attend this patriotic 
festival. It was a good letter, and had in it all 
its writer's characteristic brevity and point. It ran 
as follows : 

"War Department, Washingto^t, Dec. 29, 1864. 
My Dear Brady — Yours of the 16th, covering an inyi- 
tation of the ISTew York National Club, to pay honor to 
G-enerals Sherman and Thomas, has come to hand; but I 
cannot be with you, though the movement has all my 
sympathies. We had great difficulty in finding the right 
kind of tools at first ; but they are now being discovered 
by experience : and in Sherman and Thomas, as you sa}'", 
we have two of the keenest edge and finest mettle. Even 
had I time, why should I attend jour festival ? Things are 



3i HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

all going well to-day ; and it is only when disaster happens 
that the Secretary of War is asked after or remembered by 
an indignant public. Your sincere friend, 

Edwin M. Stanton. 

The laconic and tart humor of this characteristic 
note created much amusing comment ; Governor 
Andrew remarking that the sting of the affiiir 
could not, fortunately, apply to him, as he had 
made honorable mention of Mr. Stanton's beard 
and spectacles in his " Song of the Christmas 
Holidays." (Loud laughter.) 

ENTRANCE OF THE TWELVE CHORISTERS. 

Just at this moment the door on the chairman's 
right was flung open, and Mr. Stuart, of the 
Winter Garden, appeared, ushering in twelve 
happy -looking boys arrayed as choristers. They 
were all attired in white linen surplices, with cleri- 
cal sleeves, small red woollen hoods hanging back 
between their shoulders, and a broad blue band 
of satin passing round the neck of each and fall- 
ing down in double lappels over the white surplice 
until almost touching the ground. Each of these 
little fellows carried a bouquet in his hand, and as 
they filed off in sixes, half upon each side of Prince 
Van Buren's chair, at the head of the table, 
the tableau was extremely picturesque, and created 
not a little surprise. 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 35 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY MR. STUART. 

JVIr. Stuart explained tliat, on belialf of the 
Club, of which he was an unworthy member, he 
had volunteered to superintend the production of 
a little choral duct, or New Year's anthem, appro- 
priate to the happy prospects of peace we have 
now before us. The words of this choral duet, or 
anthem — he scarcely knew what to call it — he be- 
lieved he would commit no indiscretion in stating, 
had been furnished by one of the reverend gentle- 
men at present in this room. (Questioning looks 
from the guests toward Mr. Beecher and the Eev. 
Morgan Dix, but neither made any sign.) With 
the good leave of the company — all of whom he 
should be delighted to see at the Winter Garden 
any evening, or at his sea-side villa near New 
London, on any Friday afternoon they could run 
down to spend a couple of days with him — he 
would now call upon the first chorus of his young 
and interesting charge to commence, the band 
being requested to accompany them slowly, and 
only on their softest instruments. (Hushed ap- 
plause, the company evidently awaiting with much 
curiosity and interest to hear what was to come.) 

SONG OF THE CHORISTERS. 

The little choristers being divided into two 
equal bands, the first chorus of six sang the first 



S6 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

two of the following stanzas ; the second chorus 
of six, the next two ; and then all twelve sweet 
young voices joined in giving pathos and sublimi- 
ty to the tvv^o final verses. It was, like all that 
Mr. Stuart produces, " an immense success" — its 
idea having been given to him by some " games 
of Christmas " that he had long ago witnessed at 
the house of his honored friend, Mr. Gladstone, 
the celebrated Enghsh scholar, orator, and states- 
man. With these matters explained before-hand, 
— thus bringing the whole scene before the reader 
as vividly as it was brought before the guests, — we 
now give the words of this peculiar and striking 
anthem, which was sung to the well known old 
English air of "Art Thou not Fondly My 
Own :"— 

ANTHEM OF PEACE AND WAR. 
First CIi07'i(s of Six Voices. 

We have watched through the -weariest midnights 

That curtained our hope of Peace ; 
We have waded the deepest waters 

That ran between us and Peace ; 
We have chmbed o'er the roughest mountains 

That rose between us and Peace ! 

It hath cost us woes unnumbered, 

This promise we have of Peace ; 
Labors and bitter privations 

Because there was no Peace; 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 87 

And the bones of our bravest bleaching 
On fields that were not of Peace ! 

Second Chorus of Six Voices. 

Famine and red-eyed murder 

Are leashed in the hands of "War ; 
Walls that are blackened and roofles=! 

Lie in the wake of War ; 
The worm and the flapping buzzard — 

Oh, these are the Kings of War I 

Hollow-eyed women are weeping 

The waste and the scourge of War ; 
Wringing their pitiful fingers 

And wailing the woes of War ; 
As their children wither around tliem 

Beneath the wan blight of War ! 

Full Qhorus of Twelve Voices. 

Oh. wives, with your husbands in battle, 

Think, think of the day of Peace I 
Oh, mothers, with sons in battle, 

Cling close to the hope of Peace I 
Oh, little ones, needing your fathers. 

Pray, pray for the hour of Peace 1 

Grlory to God in the Highest ! 

He giveth us promise of Peace ! 
He will not be wrathful for ever, 

He yet will restore to us Peace — 
We see from the Wings of His Healing 

Down flutter the White Dove of Peace ! 



88 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

PRESENTATION OF BOUQUETS BY THE CHORISTERS. 

This anthem was received with the compliment 
of breathless attention during its progress ; and 
fervent, but not noisy approval, as the echoes of 
the last lines died slowly away, as if trembling 
reluctantly into silence. Mr. Stuart received the 
thanks, and his young charge the compliments, 
of all present — six of the young choristers then 
filing off and presenting their bouquets to General 
Anderson, the first hero of our war; and the 
others giving one bouquet each to the three senior 
military and three senior naval officers who were 
present. In their dresses of " red, white and blue," 
and with their young, bright, happy faces, this 
scene was not only pretty, but impressive to a 
degree seldom realized. The eyes of General 
Anderson filled with happy tears, and his voice 
was quite broken with emotion as he attempted 
to thank and address them. 



LAST SCENE OF ALL BREAKING UP OF A DELIGHT- 
FUL PARTY. 

The conclusion of this ceremony appeared the 
signal for a breaking up of the graver part of the 
audience ; Generals Dix, Hunter, and Anderson, 
Governor Andrew, the reverend gentlemen, and 
many others at once retiring — as shortly after did 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 89 

your reporter, being in a hurry to prepare these 
notes. AVhen he left, Dr. Darant was discoursing 
about the Adirondacks ; George Francis Train 
about the Pacific Railroad ; Captain Fox about 
Monitor-built Iron-clads ; Greneral Webb about 
bounty-swindling in New York, and the ojDera- 
tions of Gen. F. B. Spinola in that connection 
at Lafayette Hall ; Mr. Dana, with General Hart- 
sufif, on the true principles of strategy; while 
Swinton was growing eloquen.t and pugnacious 
(all by himself) over Hooker's fight at Lookout 
Mountain. Messrs. Brady, Pierrepont, Yan Buren, 
Barlow and the other young bucks of that ilk kept 
sloshing around indiscriminately, each satisfied 
that his own speech was a capital speech and full 
of interest, and that if all the others in the room 
would not stop talking to listen to it — why so 
much the worse for them ! 

Thus endeth our account of one of the pleasant- 
est and most perfectly successful public entertain- 
ments we have attended in many years ; but we 
feel that our account of this noble banquet would 
be imperfect if we failed here to insert the power- 
ful and brilliant editorial in which, on the same 
date, the veteran Editor of the Herald called atten- 
tion to the feast and its importance, both in rela- 
tion to the Soldiers' Home and our relations with 
France and England. Thus wrote Mr. Bennett : 

''We call the attention of all patriotic and 



40 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 

charitable citizens to the eloquent appeal of Gene- 
ral Eobert Anderson and the eruditely splendid 
oration of Major-General Dix, elsewhere published, 
in favor of the immediate establishment of a great 
E'ational Soldiers' Home, as the fittest monument 
that can be raised in token of our gratitude as a 
people for the recent blessings of victory which 
have been borne to us on the standards of Gene- 
rals Sherman and Thomas. It is clear enough 
from Dr. Agnew's letter, published yesterday, that 
nothing in the way of making a permanent provi- 
sion for our disabled heroes can be hoped for from 
the Sanitary Commission, whose resources are 
represented to be already overtaxed. It therefore 
becomes the duty of all our patriotic fellow-citizens 
to at once commence organizing a committee hav- 
ing this matter of a National Soldiers' Home for 
the objective point of its beneficent campaign, 
there being already a grand nucleus for such a 
charity to gather around, in the legacy of one 
million dollars from the Roosevelt estate, which 
the members of that loyal and distinguished family 
are anxious to devote to such a purpose, as was 
stated by Mr. R. B. Eoosevelt, on their behalf, at 
the banquet of the New York National Club last 
evening. 

'' The speech of General Dix, and more espe- 
cially that portion of it referring to our difficulties 
with Canada will be read with intense interest. 



HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 41 

both in the British provinces and empire. It is 
the utterance of a frank and accomplished soldier, 
paying implicit obedience to the authority which 
revoked his recent order, but still not afraid to 
reassert, with firmness and dignity, his individual 
judgment in favor of a stronger and less hesitating 
course. The tumultuous applause with which this 
portion of the General's speech was received, by 
an audience embracing representative men of all 
ranks and classes, should be a lesson not without 
significance and results to Mr. Secretary Seward." 



FALL OF FOET FISHER. 

trow THE NEWS WAS RECEIVED IN THE CITY 

PRIVATE o'rEILLY ON A RAMPAGE. 

From the Herald, Jan. 18, 18G5. 

The city was startled yesterday about noon by 
the cheering news of the fall of Fort Fisher. It 
was so unexpected by the people, and so sudden, 
that the effect was electric. As usual on such 
occasions, the bulletin-boards were crowded, the 
extras were in demand, and the victory was the 
subject of general congratulation in the public 
offices and other places of resort. Criticisms on 
General Butler and his previous fiasco \nqvq nume- 
rous, and hardly just in this particular ; but the 
compliments to General Grant were numerous 
and flattering, and General Terry was not forgot- 
ten. There was a general inquiry of " What 
next ?" and the thirst for news was only sharp- 
ened not quenched. 

We are deeply chagrined, however, upon a fes- 
tive occasion of this kind, to be obliged to record 
the fact that a person of whom we have heretofore 
tried to think well, should have brought himself 
to sudden grief by giving way to a too liberal 



FALL OF FORT FISHER. 43 

spirit of rejoicing — the '' spirit," especially — on ac- 
count of the success of his old commander, Grene- 
ral A. H. Terry. We refer to that eccentric war- 
rior and bard of the old Tenth Army Corps, Private 
Miles O'Reilly, Forty-seventh Regiment I^ew York 
Volunteer Infantry, who, about nine o'clock last 
evening, was arrested on the complaint of Mr. 
George Roberts, proprietor of the American Club 
House, corner of Seventeenth street and Broadway, 
charged with disorderly and riotous conduct, the 
use of much profane language, and a general chal- 
lenge to any one who would tread on the tail of 
his coat, or knock an imaginary chip off his 
shoulder. 

It seems that Private O'Reilly, in a state of high 
excitement, entered the premises of Mr. Roberts 
about eight P. M., with a large crowd at his heels, 
all of whom he insisted upon treating ; while in re- 
turn they were patiently waiting to hear him sing 
a song he had just composed in honor of the cap- 
ture of Fort Fisher. All the efforts of Mr. Roberts, 
and several of his friends who were present, were 
inadequate to clear the room of this noisy and un- 
desirable company, who were vociferous in their 
demands that " the boy should be let sing his song 
out" — a demand which they enforced by threaten- 
ing to break the decanters and mirrors (two of 
which were cracked in the final scufiie), if any 
interference were attempted. Mr. Roberts on this. 



44 FALL OF FORT FISHER. 

seeing present resistance to be vain, appeared to 
submit contentedly, only taking the precaution, 
while Miles was singing, to send down to police 
headquarters in Mulberry street for a detachment 
of the Broadway squad to clear the premises. The 
crowd, having thus secured a temporary posses- 
sion of the bar and billiard-rooms, proceeded to 
help themselves indiscriminately to all the liquors 
they desired — Mr. Eoberts, as his only means of 
keeping his house from being gutted, directing the 
two bar-keepers to give the mob all they asked for. 
The whole rabble being thus bounteously supplied. 
Private O'Reilly was lifted upon the table usually 
occupied as a cigar stand, and sang as follows : 

SHERRY, TERRY AND PORTER A LYRIC OF MIXED 

LIQUORS. 

Let us drink in golden sherry ! 

As we oft have drank before, 
Let us drink to General Terry, 
Long of head and body — very ; 
To our own, dear Alfred Terry, 

Of the old Tenth Army Corps I 

Mixing drinks is dangerous — very, 
Bringing headaches we deplore ; 

But to Porter, feeling merry, 

We drink deep in golden sherry — 

Be it long ere Charon's wherry 
That grim Admiral ferries o'er I 



FALL OF FORT FISHER. 45 

Fill to Porter and to Terry, 

They are names that we adore ; 
From Connecticut to Kerry, 
Some in grog and some in sherry, 
" To the Admiral and lo Terry" — 
Deep libations let us pour ! 

Bring the picks, and let us bury 
On New England's rugged shore, 

General Butler, who is very 

Far from feeling extra merry, 

As he reads about Alf. Terry, 
Of the old Tenth Army Corps ! 

Mr. Lincoln, who is very 

Deeply skilled in classic lore, 
Is devoted to his " Terry'' — 
His "Terentius Afer," very; 
But we better like Alf. Terry, 

Of the old Tenth Army Corps ! 

These absurd verses — mere dogjo-rel when criti- 
cally examined — the noisy and much excited 
crowd appeared to relish extremely, and persisted 
in encoring many times, the room growing more 
densely packed every moment, as the orgie pro- 
ceeded, by swarms of idle passers-by, who were 
attracted within by the singing, vociferations, 
stampings, and other indications of a "real good 
time " going on. At length, just as the choral but 
rather unsteady Private was commencing the song 
again for the fifth or sixth time. Sergeant Young, 



46 FALL OF FORT FISHER. 

chief of tlie detectives, appeared upon the scene, 
followed by some half-dozen of the burly Broad- 
way squad, and an immediate scattering followed, 
the police (who were all heavy men in need of 
"Banting,") being only able to take three pri- 
soners — one Luke Clark, of the Fifth "Ward ; James 
O'Eeilly, of the Sixteenth Ward, a cousin to the boy 
Miles ; and Private Miles himself— the latter in- 
sisting vigorously that he had only been " amusin' 
his mind by a pathriotic ditty," and threatening 
the policemen who were carrying him off to the 
station-house with Fort Lafayette for an unlimited 
number of years, " whiniver his Kiverence's Ex- 
cellency, the President, should hear what kind of 
a game they had been up to." 

The trial of these parties — continued the 
Herald — will take place this morning at the 
Tombs, being set down for eleven o'clock, and will 
doubtless be largely attended. Mr. Eoberts esti- 
mates his loss in liquors and broken furniture at 
about five hundred and eighty dollars, which the 
county will, in all probability, be eventually taxed 
to pay. The last heard of O'Reilly, last evening, 
he was extremely noisy in his cell and was bellow- 
ing snatches of military and patriotic ditties to the 
great annoyance of various somnolent policemen 
who were on duty in the station-house, as also of 
the more peaceful, respectable, and quietly disposed 
of his fellow-prisoners. Of the songs he thus 



FALL OF FORT FISHER. 47 

sang, we have only room at present for the fol- 
lowing, which he declares to have been written by 
one Corporal Florence Mulcahy, of some Connecti- 
cut regiment : 

HOW WE TALK AT OUR CAMP FIRES. 

We have heard the rebel yell, 

We have given the Union shout, 
We have weighed the matter very well 

And mean to fight it out; 
la victory's happy glow, 

In the gloom of utter rout. 
We have pledged ourselves — " Come weal or woe, 

We fight this quarrel out." 

'Tis now too late to question 

What brought the war about, 
'Tis a thing of pride and passion. 

And we mean to fight it out ; 
Let the big-wigs use the pen. 

Let them caucus, let them spout. 
We are half a million weaponed men 

And mean to fight it out. 

Our dead, our loved, are crying 

From many a stormed redoubt. 
In the swamps and trenches lying — 

" Oh, comrades, fight it out ! 
'Twas our comfort as we fell 

To hear your gathering shout. 
Rolling back the rebels' weaker yell— 

God-speed you, fight it out I" 



48 FALL OF FORT FISHER. 

The coUud pusson — free or slave — 

We care no curse about, 
But for the Jflag our fathers gave 

We mean to fight it out ; 
And while that banner brave 

One rebel rag shall flout, 
With volleying arm and flashing glaive 

We fight the quarrel out ! 

Oh, we've heard the rebel yell, 

We have given the Union shout, 
We know all the sounds of battle, 

And we mean to fight it out ; 
In the flush of perfect triumph, 

And the gloom of utter rout, 
We have sworn on many a bloody field 

" By Heaven ! we fight it out I" 



THE MONKOE DOCTEINE. 

THEORY OF THE ORBITS OF POWER. 
From the New York Herald^ February 27, 1865. 

That history is continually repeating itself is 
not a remarkably new observation ; but is one, 
the truth of which is so continually forced upon 
us, that again and again it rises to our lips or 
trickles from our pen as if spontaneously. *' What 
has been shall be, and what is has been," may be 
taken as a summary of the entire history of the 
earth, both in its past and in its prophetic applica- 
tions. The same causes operating upon similar 
nations invariably produce like results ; and if the 
Emperor of the French, in place of writing books 
about Julius Caesar, would only condescend to 
study the history and results of the three Punic 
wars, he might learn from the fate of Carthage in 
that struggle a lesson of unspeakable value at the 
present time to the prospects of his dynasty. 

The Eoman commonwealth, like our own, had 
established a regular Monroe Doctrine for all the 
islands and lands adjacent to it ; and indeed for its 
own, or the European side of the Mediterranean. 
It had its own orbit of power, and was content 



50 THE MONEOE DOCTRINE. 

that Carthage should sway the destinies of Africa, 
and be its great commercial rival on the seas ; but 
as to allowing Carthage, or any other Power, to 
come as a disturbing element within its own sphere 
of political action, or to meddle with the affairs 
either of Italy or the dependencies of the Italian 
Peninsula, or to cross the Mediterranean and esta- 
blish ascendancy in any of the countries on the 
European side adjoining Eome, " Why that," — 
said the Conscript Fathers, very gravely — "that 
would be an infringement of our Monroe Doc- 
trine ; and we hereby pledge our lives, our honors, 
and our sacred fortunes, that we will give our 
last man and our last dollar rather than submit to 
any such intermeddling." 

This resolution of the Eoman Senate was doubt- 
less forwarded with all due formalities to the Car- 
thaginian Gerusia, or Council of State; but the 
Gerusians comniitted the very egregious blunder 
of believing that the Senators of the Seven -Hilled 
City were only talking for buncombe in this par- 
ticular declaration. They did not, or could not 
realize that the Monroe Doctrine of those days lay 
at the very roots of the Eoman character ; and 
that, no matter how long its professors might be 
compelled by domestic trouble or rebellion to hold 
it in subordination, and keep it out of sight, the 
very moment they could attain peace and stable 
government at home, all their efforts and sacrifices 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE. 51 

would instantly be turned towards a vigorous and 
relentless enforcement of Prince Henry's darling 
theory : 

Two stars keep not their courses in one sphere, 
Nor can one England brook the double reign 
Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales. 

These facts and these passions the Grerusians of 
Carthage appeared as utterly to overlook as the 
French Emperor seems to be overlooking, or ignor- 
ing, similar facts and similar passions in the pre- 
sent day, with regard to ourselves. Finding the 
Komans inVolved in a succession of civil wars and 
domestic troubles, the Carthaginians first seized 
upon Sardinia, after a fierce struggle, and subse- 
quently upon Syracuse, in both of which fruitful 
islands they established friendly governments and 
most wealthy colonies — Eome the while looking 
on grimly, but without power to interfere. 

At length — disembarrassed of her civil troubles, 
and probably regarding, as we shall soon, a for- 
eign war as offering the best means for reuniting 
her lately belligerent component parts — the Eo- 
man republic, about two hundred and sixty years 
before the commencement of the Christian era, 
gave ear to the cry of the Messinians, upon whose 
soil the Carthaginians were attempting a fresh vio- 
lation of the Monroe Doctrine. War was at once 
declai'ed with all proper pomp, and pushed with 



62 THE MONROE DOCTRINE. 

every energy of the Koman people. In a year 
Syracuse was rescued from beneath the shadow of 
foreign domination ; the Eomans, heretofore with- 
out a navy, built an enormous fleet ; and, in the 
twenty-second year of this first War for the Monroe 
Doctrine, after the Carthaginians had been defeat- 
ed in a heavy sea fight by the Eomans under 
Vice-Admiral Lutatius Catulus, the Gerusians of 
Carthage " gave a receipt for the maize," so to 
speak — acknowledged the Monroe Doctrine of the 
Koman republic in its full integrity, withdrew from 
all islands and territories on the European side of 
the Mediterranean, released all Roman prisoners 
without ransom, and finally paid a very handsome 
sum towards defraying the expenses of this war 
for the vindication of the orbit of Roman power — 
or the Monroe Doctrine of the present day. 

The second Punic war had a similar origin, and 
was waged on the Roman side for the vindication 
of the self-same principle. The Carthaginians and 
their mercenaries, under Hannibal, captured Sa- 
guntum, a town on the eastern coast of Spain, and 
consequently on that side of the Mediterranean 
which the Romans claimed to be within the exclu- 
sive orbit of their empire. " Two stars hold not 
their courses in one sphere ;" nor, in the case of two 
great and progressive nationalities, can one infringe 
upon the circuit or orbit of the other without lead- 
ing to inevitable and most disastrous collisions. 



THE MONKOE DOCTRINE. 53 

This trutli neither the Carthaginian wise men of 
old nor the French Emperor, at the present day- 
have shown any ability to realize. The second 
Punic war, commenced at Saguntum, lasted for 
sixteen years, with varying fortunes — two of the 
greatest generals the world has ever seen, Han- 
nibal, on behalf of the Carthaginians and Con- 
quest, and Scipio Africanus, shouting the battle- 
cry of Eome and the Monroe Doctrine, being op- 
posed to each other up to the battle of Zaraa, in 
which the cohorts of the " Gerusians" went heavilj 
to the ground. Carthage was then stripped of all 
her navy, except ten triremes, or first-class vessels 
of war ; was deprived of every inch of her foreign 
territory, and was compelled to pay a heavy tribute 
for some years towards defraying the expenses of 
her conqueror. 

The third Punic war was short, sharp, and de- 
cisive. The " Gerusians" of Carthage apparently 
could not or would not learn wisdom from the 
past, but still kept intermeddling at every oppor- 
tunity with affairs and with territories which clear- 
ly fell within the orbit or grand circle of the pro- 
gress of the Eoman Empire. At length went 
forth the dread decree, delenda est Carthago^ or Car- 
thage is to be blotted out — an order terribly and 
brutally executed by Major-General Scipio JSmi- 
lianus on behalf of the Romans, the walls and 
houses of the city being razed to their very founda- 



54 THE MONROE DOCTRINE. 

tions, and all of Africa that once owned the sway 
of Carthage becoming thenceforth annexed as a 
Eoman province. Such was the fate, in ancient 
times, of the country which would not respect the 
" Monroe Doctrine" of a growing and powerful 
republic — that doctrine, in a word, which forbids 
any foreign Power to intrude itself within the orbit 
of another, if it be wished to avoid collisions. . 

In these days of steam the Atlantic is no more 
to our navies than was the Mediterranean to the 
galleys and triremes of the ancient Pceni and Qui- 
rites of Africa and Italy. The so-called Monroe 
Doctrine is not a new-fangled American discovery 
or claim, but an eternal principle essential to the 
preservation of peace between all progressive 
nations. "We must, at any cost, keep the orbit 
through which our star of empire has to move, 
free from all foreign obstructions or interference. 
With peace reestablished at home, we shall need 
employment for several hundred thousand soldiers, 
drawn from both armies, who have accepted the 
military calling as the profession of their lives. We 
cannot with honor, and we cannot with safety, 
permit the erection of a vast French colony on 
our Southern frontier — for to that Maximilian's 
empire amounts, and to nothing more — and it is 
now for the French Emperor to say, knowing how 
unstable in France are the elements beneath his 
throne, whether he will challenge us to a modern 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE. 55 

Punic war, in which will inevitably go forth the 
decree — not, indeed, that Paris is to be blotted out 
and France annexed — that the Napoleonic dynasty 
shall be suppressed and kicked into obscurity a3 
common disturbers of the peace of the human, 
family, and of the grand imperial orbit of the 
" manifest destiny" of these United States. 



"NEWS FROM PARNASSUS." 

Under this attractive heading a paper called Mrs, 
Grundy signalized her first issue by a gross attack 
on the literary character of a somewhat notorious 
contributor to the columns of this paper — The 
New YoEk Citizen. What the Old Lady meant 
by it, we are at a loss to imagine. We never trod 
on her toes, injured her umbrella, poked fun at her 
poke-bonnet, or mislaid her pattens. On the con- 
trary, our notices of her debut were most generous — 
perhaps far more kindly than she deserved ; and 
should have been paid for at five dollars a line : 
but no such price, nor price of any kind, was 
given. Fancy our feelings, then, when we found 
the Old Lady, in her very first issue, thus accusing 
poor Private O'Reilly of plagiarism, piracy, " pri- 
vate-eering," and other nameless offences. The 
following is the attack, which we reproduce verba- 
tim before appending our reply : 

" LITERARY PRIVATE-EERING. 

" Of all impositions on a confiding public, literary 
deceptions are perhaps the most odious. The man 
who obtains money by false pretences is liable to 
legal punishment. But before what court, other 



57 



than that of public opinion, can we arraign the 
obtainer, on false pretences, of literary fame ? 

" Into these reflections we have been led by the 
receipt of a letter from the Keverend and Yene- 
rable Father Gulielmus Henricus Au-Eelius, an 
eminent and learned monk of the Huron Theolo- 
gical Institute, in Canada West, calling attention 
to the fact that certain songs relative to our late 
war are now obtaining currency, both here and in 
Europe, as original productions ; whereas, in fact, 
they are but poor translations from certain of the 
less known Latin poets of the Second Empire. 

" As a very flagrant instance of this species of 
misappropriation, father Au-Eelius sends us the 
original Militum Carmen^ from the works of Clau- 
dius Claudianus {Amsterdam edition hy Burmann, 
1760), the last of the Latin Classic Poets, who 
flourished in the time of Theodosius, enjoying the 
patronage of the Empress Serena, and who finally 
had a statue of honor erected to his memory in 
the Forum of Trajan. 

" This beautiful relic of antique genius, which 
originally appeared in the De hello Oildonico — an 
unfinished historical poem, by Claudianus, on the 
war in Africa against Gildo — has been rather 
poorly translated quite recently, and has obtained 
wide currency in literature as the * Song of the 
Soldiers,' its translator — one Soldier O'Keilly, or 
Miles Au-Eelius, as the learned Father calls him 
3* 



58 



— impudently palming off his coarse English ren- 
dering as an effort of his own muse. 

"Here is the true Militum Carmen of Claudianus ; 
and that every reader may be able to judge for 
himself how grossly it has suffered in the Miles 
Au-Eelian or O'Reillyan translation, we follow it 
with the lame English version of the classical 
* Private,' who must hereafter change his title to 
that of ' Pirate ' in the minds of all scholarly 
men: 

" ' MILITUM CARMEN". 

" ' Agmine in crebro comites probati, 
Cogniti multis socii periclis, 
Semper ut fratres memori fideles 
Corde revincti. 

" ' Distrahat vulnus maciesque turpi s, 
Distraliat jussu subito Imperator, 
Accidat quidvis, sumus usque fido 
Pectore fratres. 

" ' Cogniti vinclo fidei serense, 
Morte in extrema socii probati, 
Cogimur fratrum pietate sacr^ 

Omne per sevum. 

" ' Sin Deus plures hiemes det aequus, 
Stabimns fortes acieque recta, 
Semper et fraternus amor calebit 
Pectore in imo. 



"NEWS FROM PARNASSUS." 59 

« 
" ' Per fidem signi laceri duello, 

Per fidem signi dominantis orbem, 

Jungimur vinclo fidei tenaci 

Semper eodem. 

" * Symbolum, partes, nihilum valebunt, 
Lingua nee gentes diriment amorem, 
Accidat quidvis, aquilee tonantis 
Inclyta proles.' 

" ' SONG OF THE SOLDIERS. 

[" Translation of the foregoing, audaciously claimed as origi' 
nal hy Private Miles O'Reilly.] 

" ' Comrades known in marches many, 
Comrades tried in dangers many, 
Comrades bound by memories many, 

Brothers evermore are we ; 
Wounds or sickness may divide us. 
Marching orders may divide us. 
But, whatever fate betide us, 

Brothers of the heart are we. 

" * Comrades known by faith the clearest. 
Tried when death was near and nearest, 
Bound we are by ties the dearest, 

Brothers evermore to be ; 
And, if spared and growing older. 
Shoulder stiU in line with shoulder, 
And with hearts no thrill the colder, 

Brothers ever we shall be. 



60 



*' * By communion of tbo banner, 
Battle-scarretl but victor banner, 
B3- the baptism of the banner, 

Brothers of one church are we ; 
Creed nor faction cjm divide us ; 
Race nor language can divide us ; 
Stil, whatever iat<? betide us, 

Brothers of the heart are we 1' 

" May we not well say of tliis : ' The force of 
impudence can no farther go?' IN'ot only is the 
translation a poor and decrepit erne, but some of 
its finest ideas — 

" ' aquiU^ tonanda 

Inclyta proles,' — 

for example, are wholly omitted and ignored. 

" In some subsequent issue, we shall call atten- 
tion to yet other Classic.al Piracies of the samje 
kind by this and other putative authors, the sub- 
ject being enormously prolific ; insomuch that 
very nearly one-half the popuhir songs of the 
present day, for which certain of our {Jhiminati 
receive credit as original, will be found, on com- 
petent examination, to be mere translations, of 
more or less merit, from certain neglected authors, 
writing in the Latin, Greek, Irish, Sanscrit, Ga?lic, 
Sclavoniau, or other ' unknown tongues/ '' 

To the foregoing charge our answer is as fol- 
lows : ^Ve want to see that '* Amsterdam Edition 



"news from PARNASSUS." 61 

by Burmann, 1760," of the works of Claudius 
Claudianus beroro losing faith in the honor of our 
eccentric Milesian Boy. General Dix informs us 
that he has searched his edition of Claudianus, and 
all the editions in the Astor Library, but no such 
verses can be found therein ; and Mr. Alexander 
T. Stewart — a very excellent classical scholar, who 
has held on to his early studies and accomplish- 
ments through a life of the most successful labor 
in the whole history of commerce — has distinctly 
authorized us to offer the handsome sum of $10,000 
" for any not forged edition of the poet in ques- 
tion," or any other " of the less known Latin poets 
of the Second Empire" containing the MUitura CJar- 
raen as above quoted. 

lias not the " Reverend and Venerable Father 
Gulielmus Henricus Au-Relius," who is described 
by Mrs. Grundy as " an eminent and learned 
monk of the Huron Theological Institute, in 
Canada West" — has not that pious and exemplary- 
man been rather poking some classical fun at the 
Old Lady, which the Old Lady may have taken 
too literally ? In a word — Is the English a trans- 
lation from the Latin of Claudius Claudianus, who 
lived more than a thousand years ago ; or is the 
Latin of Claudianus a translation from the English 
of Private Miles, who is alive and kicking to-day — 
and somewhat anxious, were she not a woman, to 
kick Mrs. Grundy f 



62 "news FKOM PARNASSUS" 

The original family name of tlie O'Eeillys, as is 
well known, was An-Kelius — the Boy Miles claim- 
ing an unbroken lineal descent from Marcus Au- 
Eelius Antoninus, who succeeded to the Eoman 
Empire on the death of Antoninus Pius, whose 
daughter, Festina, this Marcus O'Eeilly had pre- 
viously espoused. It is from the paternal side, 
therefore, the Boy professes to derive his devotion 
to philosophy and literature ; while the pious part 
of his character comes to him through his ances- 
tress, the Empress Festina, whose father was known 
in life as Antony the Pius — or "Praying Tony," 
as the Boy irreverently styles him. Now, is it 
not just possible that this " Father Gulielmus Hen- 
ricus Au-Eelius," of the Huron University, may 
be some disappointed member of the O'Eeilly 
family — perhaps a near relative — who is jealous 
of the success of our humble soldier-poet, and 
takes this surreptitious method of attempting to 
injure him in Mrs.Grundy's and the public's esti- 
mation? So clearly is this our own view of the 
case, that we " see " Mr. A. T. Stewart's offer of 
$10,000 for that Amsterdam volume, and "go 
twenty thousand dollars better !" Will Father 
William Henry O'Eeilly, of Canada W est, send us 
on his proofs ? 



BOUNTY-SWINDLING AS ONE OF THE 

FINE ARTS, 
rrs OEiGm and officeks m the days of king 

HENEY IV. 
[From the New York Herald, Dec. 25th, 1864.] 

To say that many of tlie public men and most 
of the newspapers of the day are great nincom- 
poops, would be merely to state a truism with 
which every intelligent American is already as 
familiar as with his creed. We have an illustra- 
tion of this in regard to the fuss that is being 
everywhere made about " bounty swindhng," as 
if it were " a new crime," a " heretofore unheard 
of atrocity," which was born within the last 
year and a half, and received its first pap 
within the precincts of a New York drinking- 
house. 

Now the fact is, that we first hear of " bounty- 
swindling as one of the fine arts" in the reign of 
King Henry IV. of England, the headquarters in 
which it originated being those of Brigadier-Gene- 
ral Sir John Falstaff, and their location the tavern 
of " mine hostess Quickly," in Cheapside, London, 



64 BOUNTY-SWINDLING. 

and not in tlie headquarters of Brigadier-General 
F. B. Spinola at Lafayette Hall in the city of ISTew 
York. The facts of this interesting historical case 
are about as follows : — Jefferson Hotspur had 
raised an insurrection in the ISTorthern counties of 
England, as Jefferson Davis has since raised an 
insurrection in the Southern States of our country. 
Jeff. Hotspur expected help from Owen Glen- 
dower, of AVales, from Northumberland, France, 
and various other foreign and domestic potentates, 
just as Jeff. Davis recently expected help from 
France, England, and the domestic Longs, Yoor- 
heeses and Yallandighams of the great ISTorth-west. 
Both the Jeffs, were disappointed, and in both cases 
the regular powers of their respective govern- 
ments proceeded to " seize, occupy, and repossess'* 
the revolted strongholds and regions. 

King Henry lY., however, did not fall into the 
error of believing that " it wouldn't be much of a 
shower after all ;" nor did his Secretary of State, 
the Earl of Westmoreland, give any note of hand 
for " peace within ninety days." These matters 
are not so stated in the chronicles ; but we infer 
them from the fact that there was no call for " three 
months' men" on the first breaking out of the Jeff. 
Hotspur insurrection. The order was to call out 
men, and call them out immediately, their term 
of service to extend "for life or during the 



BOUNTT-SWINDLING. 65 

Matters being thus, the Prince of Wales, a gay, 
young, rollicking buck — who had keen percep- 
tions of the ludicrous, and knew how to use all 
ranks and classes of men in their proper sphere- — 
determined to employ the well-known tavern 
popularity of a lewd old knight named Sir John 
Falstaff for the purpose of raising a brigade. Sir 
John immediately saw it was "a big thing," and 
accepted accordingly. He at once opened his 
recruiting depot in the tavern of Mrs. Quickly, 
Cheapside ; and there were employed under him, as 
sub-brokers, runners, and "shanghaers," a choice 
party, consisting of Captains Pistol, Bardolph, Gads- 
hill, Poins, and their associates, most of these being 
highwaymen, baggage-smashers, pickpockets, and 
plug-uglies — precisely the same class that we find 
employed in the same business on this side of the 
Atlantic. 

It nowhere appears that Sir John Falstaff was 
court-martialed, as General Spinola has been, al- 
though we know that he was finally sent to the 
Tower — the Fort Lafayette of those days — under 
a summary order from the Lord Chief-Justice of 
England, who declared a suspension of the habeas 
corpus in his case. The only evidence, therefore, 
that we can hope for as to the modus operandi of 
this ancient knight in the matter of ''bounty- 
swindling as one of the fine arts," we must take 
from his own volunteered confession, in Scene II. 



66 BOUNTY-SWINDLING. 

Act lY., of tlie veracious chronicles of tlie reign 
of King Henry IV., as handed down to us by one 
William Shakspeare — a rather able journalist of 
those days — who wrote for an evening newspaper 
called The Olohe Theatre^ which was the New York 
Associated Press of that benighted age. 

Now let us hear Sir John : — He confesses, after 
his brigade has been raised, that he has " misused 
the king's press," i,e. the right of conscription — 
" damnably." " I have pressed me," says he, 
" none but good householders, yeomen's sons ; 
inquired me out contracted bachelors, such as had 
been asked twice on the bans ; such a commodity 
of warm slaves, as had as lief hear the devil as a 
drum ; such as fear the report of a culverin worse 
than a struck fowl or a hurt wild duck. I pressed 
me none but such toasts and butter, with hearts 
in their bellies no bigger than pins' heads ; and 
they have bought out their services ! And now, 
my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, 
slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, 
where the glutton's dogs licked his sores ; and 
such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded 
unjust serving men, revolted tapsters and ostlers 
trade-fallen — the cankers of a calm world and a 
long peace ; ten times more dishonorably ragged 
than an old-faced ancient ; and such have I to fill 
up the room of them that have bought out their 
services, that you would think that I had a hun- 



BOUNTY-SWINDLING. 67 

dred and fifty tattered prodigals lately come from 
swine-keeping — from eating draff and husks I A 
mad fellow met me on the way, and told me I had 
unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead 
bodies! No eye hath seen such scare-crows." 
Now, let the examining surgeons on our own 
Hart's and Biker's islands and elsewhere be con- 
sulted as to whether the foregoing be not an exact 
and striking picture of the kind of recruits who 
"were submitted to their inspection as the results 
of our own " bounty -swindling " system in this 
country and city ? 

But not only was the ancient knight thus mak- 
ing, in the words of our beloved and classical 
president, a " big thing" out of the price paid by 
those whom he exempted, but it would also seem 
that he had a bounty of over two pounds in gold 
for each man thus drafted — a bounty which he 
seems to have absorbed altogether, and which, as 
gold was then, and as greenbacks • are now, must 
be considered fully equal to the three hundred 
dollars county bounty of the present day. " I 
have got," says he, referring to the Supervisors' 
Committee of that remote age, " I have got, in 
exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three 
hundred and odd pounds sterling ;" these hundred 
and fifty men being the same from whom he sub- 
sequently drew a double profit by allowing them 
to " buy out their time." 



68 BOUNTY-SWINDLING. 

But the parallel does not end here. In fact, 
there is no branch of the " bounty-swindling " 
system of to-day which will not find in the opera- 
tions of Sir John Falstaff, of his Britannic Majes- 
ty's Volunteers, a precise archetype and master- 
sample. We know that much of the recruiting 
now carried on is through the agency of our 
police officers and justices, who place before all 
arrested criminals in our city — save those arrested 
for crimes too heinous and notorious to be sup- 
pressed — the alternative either of enlisting and 
allowing their bounties to go somewhere, or of 
going themselves to the penitentiary or State pri- 
son. Now, in this mode of " filling up the ranks 
of the gallant defenders of our country," and fill- 
ing their own pockets at the same time, these gen- 
tlemen may think themselves original ; but let 
them now hear the great master of "bounty- 
swindling as one of the fine arts" on this sub- 
ject :— 

We have seen that Sir John FalstafP first 
allowed the good and decent men drafted to " buy 
out their time," himself pocketing the bribes. We 
have seen, also, that he pocketed the whole of 
their " county bounties" for the use of liimself 
and his associate sub-brokers, Messrs. Pistol, Bar- 
dolph and Company. How then did he induce 
the " scare-crows" to enlist under him without 
money and without price ? Why, obviously by 



BOUNTY-SWINDLING. 69 

just the same means that are employed to-day by 
our policemen and police j ustices ; he gave them 
the alternative of remaining in jail or " marching 
to the music of the Union." If you doubt it 
just consult his words : — " Nay, and the villains 
march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves 
on ; for, indeed, I had the most of them out of 
prison." That he knew them to be all thieves, or 
most of them, at least, is further evidenced by the 
fact, that he consoles himself for their having 
*' but a shirt and a half" in the whole brigade by 
the reflection : " But that's all one ; they'll find 
linen enough on every hedge." How they ap- 
peared to the eye of an experienced commander 
may be judged from the exclamation of Prince 
Henry who passed them on the road as he hur- 
ried forward to battle : "I never did see such 
pitiful rascals ;" to which • Sir John Falstaff 
promptly replied: "Tush, tush! they are good 
enough to toss ; food for powder, food for pow- 
der ; they will fill a pit as well as better — " thus 
illustrating precisely the value which certain of 
our modern knights, who only entered the service 
apparently to make money, are apt to place both 
on the lives of their men and the true service of 
their government. But of course in none of the 
foregoing remarks must we be misunderstood as in 
the slightest degree reflecting on any of the pure, 
patriotic, and disinterested officers who recently 



70 BOUNTY-SWINDLING. 

did business at Lafayette Hall, previous to the 
closing of that disgrace to our country by the 
action of Maj.-Gen. Dix and the minor ministra- 
tions of Private Miles O'Keillv. 



" NEWS FEOM PARNASSUS." 

GENEEAL DIX AND PRIVATE MILES AS RIVAL POETS 
AND SCHOLARS. 

Geneeal Dix, as should be well known to every 
one, is an extremely elegant classical scholar, who 
has carried forward with him through all the 
varied and valuable labors of his public life an 
unfading love and continual study of those great 
masters of antiquity by whose precepts and upon 
whose model his own pure and noble mind was 
originally formed. Let any one who seeks to 
know the value of such an education contrast the 
dignity, urbanity, and stainless integrity which 
have marked the life of this gentleman with the 
far different qualities for which too many of our 
public men are alone to be distinguished, and we 
think a full answer will be given to the too com- 
mon, though vulgar and senseless inquiry : " Of 
what practical use are classical attainments?" 
This, however, is a digression ; and now to the 
origin of these rival translations by General Dix, 
commanding Department of the East, and Private 
O'Reilly, the orderly who stood outside his door, 
of the famous Thirtieth Ode of the Third Book of 
Horace. 



72 "news FEOM PARNASSUS." 

A lady of illustrious name, who lives at Balti- 
more, and who is herself a very elegant Latin 
scholar — as in what other matters is she not ele- 
gant? — wrote to General Dix requesting him to 
furnish for her album an English rendering of the 
ode in question: an ode, she added, "with the 
confident promise of which, as she felt assured, he 
must deeply sympathize." 

As prompt in replying to the calls of gallantry 
as of duty, and peculiarly anxious to oblige a lady 
who has so many and such great claims on the 
admiration of all who know her — the General 
seized the first leisure ten minutes he could find 
and knocked off the following extremely literal, 
and yet extremely elegant, translation : 

EXEGI MONUMENTUM JERE PEEENNIUS. 

I have reared a monument to fame 

More durable than solid brass, 
Which will, in loftiness of aim, 

The regal pyramids surpass. 

No wasting shower, no rending storm 
Shall mar the work my genius rears ; 

No lapse of time shall change its form, 
No countless series of years. 

I shall not wholly die : my name 
Shall triumph o'er oblivion's power, 

And fresh, with still increasing fame, 
In glory posthumous shall tower, 



"NEWS FKOM PARNASSUS." 73 

While to the CapitoHum 

The Priest and Silent Virgin come. 

Where Aufidus impetuous roars, 
And Daunus, over arid shores 

And rural populations reigns — 
Shall I, once weak — now potent — live 
As first of all the bards to give 

^olian verse to Latin strains. 

Give me, Melpomene divine ! 

The glory due to deathless lays ; 
Propitious to my vows incline 

And crown me with Apollo's bays ! 

This translation completed, the Greneral imme- 
diately touched his bell and ordered an orderly to 
" send in O'Reilly, without delay " — the General 
doing but little in the classics or belles-lettres with- 
out the sanction, or at least the knowledge, of that 
ripe though humble authority. 

" Miles," said the General, as the boy himself 
stood before him in the first position of a soldier : 
" Miles, my boy, in the republic of letters there 
are no distinctions of shoulder-straps or cross- 
belts. Unlimber yourself, therefore ; take a seat 
for a few minutes, and tell me what you think of 
this rendering." 

Here the General handed to O'Reilly the still 
wet copy of his translation, and briefly told him 
how it came to be written — reading an extract 
4 



containing the request for it from the madame's 
letter. 

" Well, my good fellow," continued the General, 
as Miles, having read the lines twice, handed them 
back to him in silence, " what do you find wrong 
in them, or what do you think about them? 
Come, be frank ; you know it is not the first time 
you have given your opinion boldly." 

The boy shuffled uneasily a moment, and then 
murmured in a brogue, unusually broad, something 
to the effect that, under no possible circumstances, 
could it be right for a private in the ranks to tell 
his Major-General Commanding that he "was 
making a judy of himself;" which, let us add, as 
a general proposition, is undoubtedly as true as 
preaching. The translation was all right in itself: 
wonderfully literal, and yet wonderfully elegant. 
But the General was obtuse, or over-modest ; and 
clearly showed, in his exact rendering, that he 
missed the delicate compliment which the madame 
had intended. 

This in substance : for the speaker stammered 
badly, and his brogue was a broader brogue than 
ever. 

" Explain yourself more clearly, Miles," said 
the amused General, leaning back in his chair. 
*' Don't hurry yourself; take time:" for it was 
now long after office-hours — in fact, near ten 
o'clock at night. 



75 



Miles answered, blushinglj, that, if his honor's 
generalship would give him a pen and liberty to 
sit at Major Joline's table for ten minutes, he'd 
try explain to the best of his ability — and sure, 
the best of men could do no more — what his (the 
boy's) idea was of the true purpose contained in 
the madame's request. 

This consent being accorded — after half-an- 
hour's hard head-scratching, Miles reappeared out 
of the next room, his face radiant with smiles, 
and a much-blotted page of foolscap in his 
extended hand. "This, General," he said, "is 
my own poor notion of the kind of paraphrase 
the madame had in her mind :" 

EXEGI MONUMENTUM ^RE PERENNIUS. 

I have built me a monument stronger than brass, 

Than the pyramids more subhme; 
Which will bow to no siorais as they furiously pass, 

Nor will yield to the sliarp tooth of time. 

The grave shall not bury the light of my name, 

My thoughts shall not sleep in the tomb ; 
But in ages to come on the high hills of fame 

My deeds and their motives shall bloom. 

While seaward the Hudson rolls down through the land, 
And wherever the flag of our country may fly, 

Men will say, as they number the patriot band, 

" It was he first gave order—-' The k-aitor shall die !' " 



76 " NEWS FROM PARNASSUS." 

In duty performed is the true pride of men, 

Which even the humblest may feel without stint; 

And, lady, in asking this task of my pen 

I catch the sweet praise you so gracefully hint. 

" There, Greneral," said the private, as he con- 
cluded the last line of the last stanza : " That's 
my idea of what the madame meant bj her 
request. Everybody knows the Hudson, while 
nobody knows the ' violens Aufidus.^ Everybody 
understands your ' shoot him on the spot ' order, 
at the commencement of the war ; while the merit 
of having been the first to wed the ' Solium 
Carmen ad Italos modos ' is something for which, 
neither the madame, nor any sensible man or 
woman in the present day, can well be imagined 
to care a single brass farthing. At any rate," 
added Miles, as he resumed the first position of a 
soldier, and saluted stifiiy before turning to quit 
the room ; " at any rate. General, I'm willing to 
leave it to the madame herself, whether she doesn't 
like my free-and-easy paraphrase a sight better 
than your exact translation." 

The madame, on having the matter referred to 
her, declined to express any preference — saying, 
indeed, that both were good in their respective 
ways. But it is to be remarked, that, while the 
General's lines live in her album, where she is 
fond of showing them to the initiated, it is her 
habit, in telling the story, to quote from memory, 



"news from PARNASSUS." 77 

and without reference to tlie book, the more lively 
version of the old ode contained in O'Reilly's 
paraphrase. , 



THE FALL OF ETCHMOND. 

TEIUMPH OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY — OUR ATTI- 
TUDE TO THE SOUTH AND TO EUROPE. 

[From the New York Herald, April, 1865.] 

General Lee has surrendered ! That is the 
news of the hour — the supreme news of our cen- 
tury ; and we have now a moment to think 
seriousl}^ and calmly on the duties devolved upon 
us by the termination of the rebellion. It is not 
only the privilege but the duty of victors to be 
generous, as by such a course fresh laurels are 
added to their fame, and their ascendancy is more 
firmly established. A powerful people, who have 
so gloriously attested a strength more than ade- 
quate for every need, can well afford to treat their 
vanquished domestic enemies with the splendid 
leniency exhibited in the terms of surrender pro- 
posed by General Grant and accepted by General 
Lee, while regarding with silent derision, or ignor- 
ing altogether, the foiled efforts and hopes of all 
their foreign foes. Our great popular struggle, 
now virtually closed, finds us with vast interests 
in both sections of our reunited country demand- 
ing prompt attention ; but with no revenges to 



THE FALL OF RICHMOND. 79 

be gratified, nor any inclination to squander time 
in the costly luxury of obtaining retribution for 
bygone injuries. Over the errors of the South let 
a veil be thrown for ever ; while for the wrongs 
inflicted on us during the past four years by the 
governments of France and England we can best 
obtain satisfaction by showing to the oppressed 
populations of those countries how superbly con- 
temptuous of foreign interference — how grandly 
magnanimous to the misled and chastened chil- 
dren of our own household — the ruling democracy 
of this continent can prove in their hour of tri- 
umph. It is by an example of the ever-increasing 
prosperity and grandeur of our reunited country, 
acting on the aspirations, necessities, and impulses 
of the French and English masses, that the unwise 
and unjust policy of their respective governments 
in favor of the now almost extinguished "con- 
federacy" can be most effectually punished — these 
governments, in their blind hatred and jealousy 
of our free democratic system, having established 
a precedent in granting belligerent rights to rebel- 
lious States which must hereafter, and before long, 
prove fatal to their own existence. They, surely, 
of all others — only existing by legitimacy and 
divine right — should have been the last to recog- 
nize and abet any insurrection against organized 
national authority ; and, least of all, an insurrec- 
tion against a government so absolutely free and 



80 THE FALL OF RICHMOND. 

equal to all sections and classes as was, and shall 
hereafter be, our own. If, for alleged wrongs of 
anticipation or frivolous theories of pride, certain 
States of our Union were justified in rebelling 
against a government under which all had equal 
rights and protection — their action receiving the 
approval of the French Emperor and the active 
sympathy of the British aristocracy — how will the 
account stand when the oppressed French and 
British populations rise up against the intolerable 
political oppressions and physical privations under 
which they now groan, and from which their only 
present hope of escape is by emigration to this 
generous land ? 

The struggle we have just brought to an end 
has not been in the least understood abroad ; nor, 
indeed, has its full purport been revealed to any 
but the most thoughtful and far-seeing of our own 
people. Earl Kussell declared it to be "a contest 
for independence by the South, and for empire on 
the part of the North" — than which it is impossi- 
ble to conceive or frame any statement of equal 
brevity containing errors so gigantic. Our strug- 
gle has not been one for empire, nor even — in any 
strict sense — for the constitution ; nor will it be 
found, when closely scrutinized, a war declared or 
carried on by the regular machinery of our govern- 
ment for the vindication of our national authority. 
This war has been a people's war for the mainte- 



THE FALL OF RICHMOND. 81 

nance and supremacy of the people's right to 
govern themselves — a war as much for the true 
ultimate interests of the Southern as of the N'orth- 
ern people ; and having for its main object to 
reaffirm and establish once and for evermore that 
the will of the majority, peacefully and legally 
expressed, must and shall be the supreme and 
irresistible power of our whole country, to which 
the minority must peacefully and legally submit, 
or be prepared to take the consequences. All will 
remember that in the early days of Mr. Lincoln's 
previous term his Secretary of State and other 
Cabinet officers held grave question as to the ex- 
pediency or even " constitutionality" of attempting 
to prevent by military force the secession of any 
*' sovereign State" from the Union. They fussed 
and dawdled over this for more than a month, 
many prominent republicans being openly in favor 
of an unresisted separation. But at last, by the 
mad folly of some few Southern leaders. Fort 
Sumter was fired upon ; and then at once, with 
a magnificent unanimity, our whole people arose 
in their might, brushing aside as cobwebs all 
technical opposition to their will, and fiercely 
demanding of the authorities they had placed in 
power arms and organization for the re-assertion 
of the supremacy of the ballot over every square 
mile, and foot, and inch of their indivisible coun- 
try. How little the regular machinery of our 
4* 



82 THE FALL OF EICHMOND. 

government appreciated the gravity of that crisis, 
or the intense earnestness of our people in their 
resolve to maintain popular authority in all sec- 
tions, the first ridiculous call for " seventy-five 
thousand men to serve three months" may suffi- 
ciently illustrate. Trained only in the routine of 
party chicane and deception, the mere politicians 
who then formed our so-called " governing class," 
could not realize that a call for one million men to 
fight, and, if need were, all to perish in this cause, 
would have been as instantly and fully answered. 
And what has been the history of our struggle, 
so fraught on both sides with heroic events, since 
that hour ? Has it not been, on the part of the 
North, one continual pushing forward of our lag- 
gard and hesitating authorities by the accumulat- 
ing forces of the public will ? All former cal- 
culations of finance have been set at defiance by 
the lavish promptness of the great masses of our 
people in supporting the national credit. All the 
generals given to us by Government in the early 
days of our struggle proved failures, and not one 
of them is now in eminent command. It was our 
people who furnished the fighting material of our 
campaigns by volunteering — for the " draft " 
proved as abortive a measure as all the other spe- 
cial agencies of our government ; and when the 
soldiers were thus brought together in vast fami- 
lies of armies, it was they — armed children of the 



THE FALL OF EICHMOND. 83 

people, on behalf of the people — who disco veered 
and raised to command their proper generals. 
Grant— our own glorious and victorious Grant, 
whose name will live in history as one of the 
world's noblest soldiers — Grant, we say, joined the 
volunteers of Illinois as the Captain of a company 
of infantry ; and the only direct action of the 
government in his case was an order to remove 
him from command just previous to his capture 
of Fort Donelson — an event which retained him 
in the service to become, as he is to-day, the mili- 
tary savior of his country. Sherman declared, in 
the first year of the rebellion, that he would 
require two hundred thousand men for the opera- 
tions which, even at that early day, fell within 
the scope of his far-seeing genius ; and forthwith 
he was relieved and pronounced insane by Mr. 
Secretary Cameron. What part had the govern- 
ment proper in Sheridan's elevation — the match- 
less worth of our greatest cavalry leader having 
first been discovered by the troops who fought 
under him, and the successes they enabled him to 
achieve compelling his recognition by the author- 
ities. It is of public record that it was in con- 
templation to remove General Thomas during the 
very hottest hours of the contest which hurled 
back into Alabama the shattered divisions of 
Hood ; and, if we chose to extend this article, 
and enter upon details, it might, we think, be 



84 THE FALL OF RICHMOND. 

demonstmted that in no single case has a military 
officer, originally selected for high command by 
our government, proved equal to the responsi- 
bilities of his position. It was our people who 
furnished the armies, and the armies then selected 
their own commanders — the Lieutenant-General 
himself having been imposed upon the Govern- 
ment by a vote which the voice of the army com- 
pelled the elected representatives of the people to 
cast in favor of their most trusted chief. It is the 
people, also, who have furnished all the requisite 
finances, material, resources, and powers for the 
conflict, their indestructible faith in the final tri- 
umph of popular institutions overcoming every 
obstacle, and even defying the worst mismanage- 
ment of Secretary Chase to bankrupt a treasury 
which had its best basis in their unfaltering 
resolve. 

To the people, therefore, and to our gallant 
armies — headed by Stanton, Grant, Sherman, 
Sheridan, and their brave associates — all the 
glory of the present moment belongs ; and it 
should properly be left with them to decide on 
what terms of permanent pacification the van- 
quished in this contest are to be reaccepted as 
citizens of the Union. That those terms will be 
generous, we are well assured ; for our armies are 
true representatives of the people, and the Ame- 
ricans are a most generous people; while, as to 



THE FALL OF RICHMOND. 85 

the injuries inflicted upon us in the earlier days 
of our struggle by the failure of the English and 
French governments to carry out their treaty 
obligations with a friendly government, and to 
enforce the law of nations in our interest, we can 
well afford — as before remarked — to leave time 
and the powerful example of our success to bring 
about a day of reckoning for their conduct. If 
Ireland, for instance, should again rebel — as 
Ireland has had a habit of doing for six hundred 
years — with what face could the British govern- 
ment ask us to prevent the Fenian Brotherhood, 
for example, from sending over arms and muni- 
tions of war for one or two hundred thousand 
men, with from five to seven thousand veteran 
soldiers and officers, trained in our battles of the 
past four years, and only panting to assist in 
organizing on Irish soil the inchoate valor and 
sinew of an Irish army ? Or what plea could the 
French Emperor advance against our recognizing 
whatever popular movement may hereafter make 
head against his throne, or the throne of his Mexi- 
can 'protege^ in case the soldiers of General Lee 
should see fit to emigrate in that direction ; or the 
selling and sending by our merchants of armed 
ships and all the munitions of " belligerency" to 
any country or people with which either he or 
Maximilian of Mexico shall hereafter be engaged 
in hostilities? Our surest mode of securing satis- 



86 THE FALL OF RICHMOND. 

faction and indemnity for all wrongs we have 
received from Europe, will be in our reunited 
capacity to become hourly and daily more pros- 
perous, beneficent, and powerful under our popu- 
lar institutions, thus setting before the oppressed 
masses of France and England a bright example 
and beacon, of which the proletarian elements in 
both countries will not be slow to take advantage. 
The elder Napoleon spoke a most serious and 
solemn truth when he declared that within fifty 
years from his death " all Europe must be Cos- 
sack or republican." The triumph of the Ameri- 
can democracy in this war for the supremacy of 
the institutions under which all our previous pro- 
gress has been achieved, is an assurance that his 
prophecy will be fulfilled ; and not in the Cossack 
alternative. Less than a year ago the popular 
assertion of American self-knowledge, which took 
shape in the phrase "We are a great people," fur- 
nished a continual theme of sneering laughter to 
all the malignant tory journalists and bitter impe- 
rialistic wits of London and Paris. What have 
these gentlemen now to say as they read the intel- 
ligence of the fall of the rebel capital ? 

But a triumph so great as the fall of Eichmond 
and the surrender of Gen. Lee, surely deserves to 
be preserved in song. We therefore copy from 
the editorial page of the Tribune, dated April 8d, 
1865, the following lin^s from the Bard of the 



THE FALL OF EICHMOND. 87 

Old Tenth Army Corps, written the previous 
evening on receipt of the glorious news : 

THE FALL OF KICHMOND ; OR, "THE DAY WE 
CELEBRATE." 

Bad luck to the man who is sober to-night ! 

He's a could-blooded hodhagh or saycret Secesher, 
Whose heart for the Ould Flag has niver been right, 

An' who takes in the fame of his counthry no pleasure. 
Och, murther ! will none o' yez hould me, me dears ! 

Or 'tis out o' me shkin wid deUght 1*11 be jumpin' ; 
Wid me eyes sbwimmin' round in the happiest tears, 

An' the heart in me breasht like a pistin-rod thumpin' ! 

Musha, glory to God ! for the news you hare sint, 

Wid your own purty fist, Misther President Linkin ! 
An' may God be around both the bed an' the tint 

Where our bully boy Grant does his atin' an' thinkin' I 
Even Shtanton, to-night, we'U consade he was right, 

Whin he played the ould scratch wid our Have-you-Ms- 
carkiss ; 
An' to gallant Phil Sherry we'll dhrink wid delight, 

On whose bright plume o' fame not a shpot o' the dark 
t^ is I 

Let the chapels be opened, the althars illumed. 

An' the mad bells ring out from aich turret an' shteeple ; 
Let the chancels wid flowers be adorned an' perfumed ; 
While the Sojarths — God bless 'em ! give thanks for the 
people I 
For the city is ours that we sought from the shtart, 
An' our boys through its sthreets " Hail Columbia" are 
yellin' ; 



88 THE FALL OF RICHMOND. 

An' there's Payee in the air, an' there's pride in the heart, 
An' our Flag has a fame that no tongue can be telUn' ! 

To the dioul wid the shoddy-conthractors an' all 

Them goold speculathors, whose pie is now ''humble" ! 
The cost o' beef, praties, an' whishky will fall. 

An' what more could we ax — for the rints too will tum- 
ble ? 
On the boys who survive, fame an' pinsions we'll press, 

Every orphan the war's med, a home we'll decree it ; 
An' aich soldier's young sweetheart shall have a new dhress, 

That will tickle her hayro, returnin', to see it ! 

0, land o' thrue freedom ! 0, land of our love, 

Wid your ginerous welcome to all who but seek it; 
May your stars shine as long as the twinklers above 

An' your fame be so grand that no mortial can shpeak 
it I 
All the winds o' the world as around us they blow, 

No banner so glorious can wake into motion ; 
An' wid Payee in our own land, you know we may go, 

Just to settle some thriflhi' accounts o'er the ocean I 

So come, me own Eileen ! come Nora an' Kate, 

Come Michael an' Pat, all your Sunday duds carry ; 
We'll give thanks in the chapel, an' do it in shtate, 

An' we'll pray for the sowls o' poor Murtagh an' Larry ; 
Woe's me ! in the black shwamps before it they shleep. 

But the good Grod to-night — whose thrue faith they have 
cherished — 
His angels will send o'er the red fields a-shweep. 

In aich cowld ear to braithe — " Not in vaiur have you 
perished!" 



THE FALL OF RICHMOND. 89 

So bad luck to the man who is sober to-night! 

He's a cowld-blooded hodhagh or saycret Secesher, 
Whose heart for the Ould Flag has niver been right, 

An' who takes in the fame of his counthry no pleasure I 
Och, murther 1 will none o' yez hould me, me dears ! 

For 'tis out o' me shkin, I'm afeard, I'll be jumpin' ; 
Wid me eyes shwimmin' round in the happiest tears, 

An' the heart in me breasht like a pistin-rod thumpin' ! 



THE GREAT CRIME. 



[From the New York Herald^ April 17, 1865.] 

Abraham Lincoln, in the full fruition of his 
glorious work, has been struck from the roll of 
living men bj the pistol-shot of an assassin. That 
is the unwelcome news which has, for the last two 
days, filled every loyal heart with sadness, horror, 
and a burning thirst for retribution. That is the 
news which has swept away from the public mind 
every sentiment of leniency or conciliation towards 
the conquered brigands of the South, and in whose 
lurid light, as by the phosphorescent flames 
recently enkindled in the crowded hotels of this 
city by men with rebel commissions in their 
pockets, we are again terribly reminded of the 
absolute barbarity and utter devilishness of the 
foeman we have now tightly clutched in our vic- 
torious grasp. The kindliest and purest nature, 
the bravest and most honest will, the temper of 
highest geniality, and the spirit of largest prac- 
tical beneficence in our public life, has fallen a 
victim to the insane ferocity of a bad and mad 
vagabond, who had been educated up to this height 
of crime by the teachings of our copperhead era- 



THE GREAT CRIME. 91 

cles, and by the ambition of fulfilling those instruc- 
tions which he received " from Eichmond." Of 
him, however, and the bitter fruits to the South 
and to all Southern sympathizers which must fol- 
low his act as inevitably as the thunder-storm 
follows the lightning flash, we do not care in this 
moment of benumbing regret and overwhelming 
excitement to allow ourselves to speak. The deli- 
berations of justice must be held in some calmer 
hour ; while, for the present, we can but tlirow 
out some few hurried reflections on the character 
of the giant who has been lost to our Israel, and 
the glorious place in history his name is destined 
to occupy. 

Whatever judgment may have been formed by 
those who were opposed to him as to the calibre 
of our deceased Chief Magistrate, or the place he 
is destined to occupy in history, all men of undis- 
turbed observation must have recognised in Mr. 
Lincoln a quaintness, originality, courage, honesty, 
magnanimity, and popular force of character such 
as have never heretofore, in the annals of the 
human family, had the advantage of so eminent a 
stage for their display. He was essentially a 
mixed product of the agricultural, forensic, and 
frontier life of this continent — as indigenous to our 
soil as the cranberry crop, and as American in his 
fibre as the granite foundations of the Apalachian 
range. He may not have been, and perhaps was 



92 THE GREAT CRIME. 

not, our most perfect product in any one brancb 
of mental or moral education ; but, taking him for 
all in all, the very noblest impulses, peculiarities, 
and aspirations of our whole people — what may 
be called our continental idiosyncrasies — were 
more collectively and vividly reproduced in his 
genial and yet unswerving nature than in that of 
any other public man of whom our chronicles 
bear record. 

If the influence of the triumph of popular insti- 
tutions in our recent struggle prove so great over 
the future destiny of all European nations as we 
expect it must, Mr. Lincoln will stand in the 
world's history, and receive its judgment, as the 
type-man of a new dynasty of nation-rulers — not 
for this country alone, but for the whole civilized 
portion of the human family. He will take his 
place in a sphere far higher than that accorded to 
any mere conqueror ; and, indeed, without speak- 
ing profanely, we may well say that, since the 
foundation of the Christian era, no more remarka- 
ble or pregnant passages of the world's history 
have been unfolded than those of which Mr. Lin- 
coln on this continent has been the central figure 
and controlling influence. It is by this measure- 
ment he will be judged, and by this standard will 
his place be assigned to him. Under his rule our 
self-governing experiment has become, within the 
past four years, a demonstration of universal sig- 



THE GREAT CRIME. 93 

nificance that the best and strongest rule for everj 
intelligent people is a government to be created 
by the popular will, and choosing for itself the 
representative instrument who is to carry out its 
purposes. Four years ago it appeared an even 
chance whether Europe, for the next century at 
least, should gravitate towards democracy or 
Csesarism. Louis Napoleon was weak enough to 
hope the latter, and has destroyed himself by the 
folly of giving his hope expression. The triumph 
of the democratic principle over the aristocratic in 
our recent contest is an assurance that time has 
revolved this old earth on which we live into a 
new and perhaps happier — perhaps sadder — era ; 
and Jefferson Davis, with his subordinate conspi- 
rators, flying from their capital before the armed 
hosts of the Nation which had elected and re-elected 
Abraham Lincoln, may be regarded as a transfi- 
guration of imperialism, with its satellite aristo- 
cracies, throwing down the fragments of a broken 
sceptre at the feet of our American — the demo- 
cratic — principle of self-rule. 

The patriarchal system of government was, we 
may presume, as simple as the lives of those over 
whom it was exercised, and has left but very im- 
perfect traces of its existence. Of the theocratic 
or priestly form of government, we have had 
types in the characters of Moses and Mohammed 
— both powerful and original men, and true rej^re- 



94 THE GREAT CRIME. 

sentatives of the ambitions, needs, and poetically 
superstitious temperaments of the nations they re- 
spectively ruled. With Rome came the full deve- 
lopment of the imperial system, based on military 
subjugation and absorption ; the system which 
Louis Napoleon believes is about being revived — 
wholly oblivious, apparently, that his volume of 
moody and fantastic dreams is printed on a steam 
press, and not copied painfully from waxen tablets, 
as were the memoirs of Julius Caesar, by the 
stylus of a single copyist. With the spread of 
Catholicity came the feudal system, of which 
Charlemagne was but an accident and by no 
means the creator — that system having been a 
necessity for the perpetuation of Church j)roperty 
and the protection of the non-belligerent religious 
Orders. With the discovery of printing, imme- 
diately followed by Luther's insurrectionary up- 
heaval in the religious world, commenced the 
mental and moral preparation of mankind for the 
acceptance of popular institutions and the right 
of self-government — in a word, for the democratic 
principle of which Cromwell was the first forcible 
expression, and Kapoleon Bonaparte, in his earlier 
triumphs over kings and empires, the armed and 
irresistible assertion. False to the ideas which 
caused his elevation, this Napoleon was hurled 
from the throne he sought to build on the ruins 
and with the materials of prostrate popular liber- 



THE GREAT CRIME. 95 

tj ; and it was thus reserved by an All-wise Pro- 
vidence for this latest found of the continents of 
our earth, to give the first successful example of 
that truly popular system of government — soon 
to be in control of all nationalities — which had 
the moral sublimity and practical virtues of Greorge 
"Washington to guide, it through its experimental 
stage ; and the perhaps externally grotesque, but 
morally magnificent, figure of Abraham Lincoln 
to be both its representative and martyr in the 
present supreme moment of its permanent crown- 
ing. 

This estimate of the place inevitably to be 
occupied in the world's history by the great Na- 
tional Chief whose loss we mourn may not prove 
either a familiar or pleasant idea for the mere par- 
tisans of the present day to contemplate ; but it 
will be found none the less a true and philosophi- 
cal estimate. In the retrospective glance of his- 
tory the '' accidents," as they are called, of his 
elevation will all have fiided out of sight ; and the 
pen of the historian will only chronicle some such 
record as the following : — From the very humblest 
position in a family subsisting by agricultural 
labor, and himself toiling for daily bread in his 
early youth, this extraordinary mau, by the gifts 
of self-education, absolute honesty of purpose, 
perfect sympathy with the popular heart, and great 
natural endowments, first rose to eminence as a 



i^6 THE GREAT CRIME. 

lawyer ; then graduated in Congress ; was next 
heard of as the powerfal though unsuccessful 
rival for national Senatorial honors of the demo- 
cratic candidate for the Presidency, over whom he 
subsequently triumphed in 1860; and four years 
later we find him, in the midst of overwhelming 
financial embarrassments, and during the uncer- 
tain progress of the bloodiest and most desolating 
civil war ever waged, so completely retaining the 
confidence of the American people as to be trium- 
phantly reelected to the first ofl&ce in their gift. 
They will claim for him all the moral influences, 
which — acting through material forces and agen- 
cies — have led to the abolition of slavery, and the 
permanent enthroning of popular institutions on 
this continent ; and, in their general summing up 
of this now unappreciated age in which we have 
our feverish being, and in their pictures of those 
events wherein the clamorous partisans of the past 
week were prone to urge that Mr. Lincoln had 
been but a passive instrument, his name and figure 
will be brought forward in glowing colors on their 
canvass, as the chief impelling power and central 
organizer of the vast results which cannot fail to 
follow our vindication of the popular form of 
government. 

And surely some hundred years hence, when 
the staid and scholarly disciples of the historic 
Muse bring their grave eyes to scan, and their 



THE GREAT CRIME. 97 

brief tape-lines to measure the altitude and atti- 
tude, properties, and proportions of our deceased 
Chief Magistrate, their surprise — taking them to 
be historians of the present time — will be intense 
beyond expression. It has been for centuries the 
tradition of their tribe to model every public cha- 
racter after the style of the heroic antique. Their 
nation-founders, warriors, and lawmakers have 
been invariably clad in flowing togas, crowned with 
laurel or oak wreaths, and carrying papyrus rolls 
or the batons of empire in their outstretched 
hands. How can men so educated — these poor, 
dwarfed ransackers of the past, who have always 
regarded greatness in this illusory aspect — ever be 
brought to comprehend the genius of a character 
so externally uncouth, so pathetically simple, so 
unfathomably penetrating, so irresolute, and yet 
so irresistible, so hizarre^ grotesque, droll, wise, and 
perfectly beneficent in all its developments as was 
that of the great original thinker and statesman 
for whose death the whole land, even in the midst 
of victories unparalleled, is to-day draped in 
mourning? It will require an altogether new 
breed and school of historians to begin doing jus- 
tice to this type-man of the world's last political 
evangel. No ponderously eloquent Greorge Ban- 
croft can properly rehearse those inimitable stories 
by which, in the light form of allegory, our mar- 
tyred President has so frequently and so wisely 



98 THE GREAT CRIME. 

decided tlie knottiest controversies of his Cabinet ; 
nor can even the genius of a Washington Irving 
or Edward Everett, in some future age, elocutionize 
into the formal dignity of a Greek statue the 
kindly but powerful face of Mr. Lincoln, seamed 
in circles by humorous thoughts and furrowed 
crosswise by mighty anxieties. It will take a new 
school of historians to do justice to this eccentric 
addition to the world's gallery of heroes ; for while 
other men as interesting and original may have 
held equal power previously in other countries, it 
is only in the present age of steam, telegraphs, 
and prying newspaper reporters that a subject so 
eminent, both by genius and position, could have 
been placed under the eternal microscope of criti- 
cal examination. 

As to the immediate effect of Mr. Lincoln's 
death, our institutions are fortunately of a charac- 
ter not depending on the life of any individual for 
their maintenance or progress. We shall miss his 
wise guidance and the radiations of that splendid 
wit which has illumined so many of our darkest 
hours during the past four years of struggle. We 
shall for ever execrate "the deep damnation of 
his taking off," and may doubtless — for we are 
but human — more rigorously press upon the van- 
quished in this contest who have been prompters 
of the bloody deed the full penalties of their hein- 
ous crimes. Nevertheless the progress of the 



THE GREAT CRIME. 99 

American government is upward and onward, 
casting flowers as it passes upon the grave of eacb 
new martyr, but never halting in the march of its 
divine and irresistible mission. In Yice-President 
Andrew Johnson — henceforward President of the 
United States — we have a man of similar origin 
with Mr. Lincoln; equally a child of the people, 
equally in sympathy with their instincts, and per- 
haps better informed as to the true condition and 
governmental necessities of the Southern States. 
Self-educated, and raised by personal worth 
through years of laborious industry and sacrifice, 
no accident of a moment can be accepted by the 
judgment of our people as reversing Mr. John- 
son's claims to the confidence and respect of the 
country. In Secretary Stanton and General 
Grant he has two potent and reliable advisers, who 
will give the first steps of his administration such, 
wise support and guidance as they may need ; and 
while we all must mourn with sad and sickened 
hearts the success of the great crime which has 
removed our beloved and trusted President from 
the final scenes of the contest he had thus far con- 
ducted to a triumphant issue, let us not forget that 
by the circumstance of death the seal of immor- 
tality has been stamped upon his fame ; nor is it 
any longer in the power of changing fortune to 
take away from him, as might have happened had 
he lived, one of the most solid, brilliant,- and 



100 THE GREAT CRIME. 

stainless reputations of which in the world's 
annals any record can be found — its only peer 
existing in the memory of George Washington. 

And now we feel that we cannot better conclude 
this saddest article we have ever penned, than by 
laying before our readers the following simple but 
earnestly felt lines, suggested by the first rude 
shock of our national bereavement. They aspire 
to no other merit than a faithful rendering of the 
popular estimate in which Mr. Lincoln's character 
was held : 

THE LOST CHIEF. 

He filled the Nation's eye and heart, 

A loved, familiar, honored name, 

So much a brother, that his fame 
Seemed of our hves a common part. 

His towering figure, sharp and spare, 
Was with such nervous tension strung, 
As if on each strained sinew swung 

The burden of a people's care. 

His changing face what pen can draw, 
Pathetic, kindly, droll or stern. 
And with a glance so quick to learn 

The inmost truth of all he saw. 

Pride found no idle space to spawn 

Her fancies in his busy mind ; 

His worth, hke health or air, could find 
No just appraisal till withdrawn. 



THE GREAT CRIME. 101 

He was his Country's, not his own, 

And had no wish but for her weal ; 

Nor for himself could think or feel 
But as a laborer for her throne. 

Her flag upon the heights of power, 

Stainless and unassailed to place — 

To this one aim his earnest face 
Was bent through every burdened hour. 

The veil that hides from our dull eyes 

A hero's worth, Death only hfts ; 

"While he i-i with us, all his gifts 
Find hosts to question, few to prize. 

But done the battle, won the strife, 
When torches light his vaulted tomb, 
Broad gems flash out and crowns illume 

The clay-cold brows undecked in life. 

And men of whom the world will talk 

For ages hence, may noteless move, 

And only, as they quit us, prove 
That giant souls have shared our walk : 

For Heaven — aware what follies lurk 
In our weak hearts — ^their mission done, 
Snatches her loved ones from the sun 

In the same hour that crowns their work. 

0, loved and lost ! Thy patient toil 
Had robed our cause in Victory's light, 
Our country stood redeemed and bright, 

With not a slave on all her soil. 



102 THE GREAT CRIME. 

Again o'er Southern towns and towers 
The eagles of our Nation flew ; 
And as the weeks to Summer grew 

Each day a new success was ours. 

'Mid peals of bells, and cannon bark, 
And shouting streets with flags abloom, 
Sped the shrill arrow of thy doom, 

And, in an instant, all was dark ! 

Thick clouds around us seem to press ; 

The heart throbs wildly — then is still ; 

Father, 'tis hard to say, " Thy will 
Be done!" in such an hour as this. 

A martyr to the cause of man, 
His blood is freedom's eucharist, 
And in the world's great hero-list 

His name shall lead the van ! 

Yea ! raised on Faith's white wings, unfurled 
In heaven's pure light, of him we say : 
" He fell upon the self-same day 

A Greater died to save the world." 



EECOLLECTIONS OF MR. LINCOLN. 

A VERY CUEIOUS CONVERSATION I WHAT HE THOUGHT 
ABOUT CONSPIRACIES TO ASSASSINATE HIM, THREE 
YEARS AGO. 

In" the fall of 1862 the writer of this article, 
being then a member of the staff of General Hal- 
leck, had frequent occasion to wait upon our 
recently deceased President, both during official 
hours and at other times. 

Once — on what was called "a public day," 
when Mr. Lincoln received all applicants in their 
turn — the writer was much struck by observing, 
as he passed through the corridor, the heteroge- 
neous crowd of men and women, representing all 
ranks and classes, who were gathered in the large 
waiting-room outside the presidential suite of 
offices. 

Being ushered into the President's chamber by 
Major Hay, the first thing he saw was Mr. Lincoln 
bowing an elderly lady out of the door — the 
President's remarks to her being, as she still lin- 
gered and appeared reluctant to go : "I am 
really very sorry, madam ; very sorry. But your 
own good sense must tell you that I am not here 



104 RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. LINCOLN. 

to collect small debts. You must appeal to the 
courts in regular order." 

When she was gone Mr. Lincoln sat down, 
crossed his legs, locked his hands over his knees, 
and commenced to laugh — this being his favorite 
attitude when much amused. 

" What odd kinds of people come in to see me," 
he said ; " and what odd ideas they must have 
about my office ! Would you believe, Major, that 
the old lady who has just left came in here to get 
from me an order for stopping the pay of a Trea- 
sury clerk, who owes her a board-bill of about 
seventy dollars ?" And the President rocked him- 
self backward and forward, and appeared intensely 
amused. 

" She may have come in here a loyal woman," 
continued Mr. Lincoln; "but I'll be bound she 
has gone away believing that the worst pictures 
of me in the Richmond press only lack truth in 
not being half black and bad enough." 

This led to a somewhat general conversation, in 
which I expressed surprise that he did not adopt 
the plan in force at all military headquarters, 
under which every apphcant to see the General 
Commanding had to be filtered through a sieve of 
officers — assistant adjutant-generals, and so forth; 
who allowed none in to take up the general's time 
save such as they were satisfied had business of 
sufficient importance, and which could be trans- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. LINCOLN. 105 

acted in no other manner than by a personal 
interview. 

" Of every hundred people who come to see 
the General-in-chief daily," I explained, "not ten 
have any sufficient business with him, nor are they 
admitted. On being asked to explain for what 
purpose they desire to see him, and stating it, it is 
found, in nine cases out of ten, that the business 
properly belongs to some one or other of the sub- 
ordinate bureaux. They are then referred, as the 
case may be, to the quartermaster, commissary, 
medical, adjutant-general, or other departments, 
with an assurance that — even if they saw the 
General-in-chief — he could do nothing more for 
them than give them the same direction. With 
these points courteously explained," I added, 
"they go away quite content, although refused 
admittance." 

" Ah, yes !" said Mr. Lincoln, gravely — and his 
words on this matter are important as illustrating 
a rule of his action, and to some extent, perhaps, 
the essentially representative character of his 
mind and of his administration : " Ah, yes ! such 
things do very well for you military people, with 
your arbitrary rule, and in your camps. But the 
office of President is essentially a civil one, and 
the affair is very different. For myself, I feel — 
though the tax on my time is heavy — that no 
hours of my day are better employed than those 
5* 



106 RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. LINCOLN. 

whicli thus bring me again within the direct con- 
tact and atmosphere of the average of our whole 
people. Men moving only in an official circle are 
apt to become merely official — not to say arbitrary 
— in their ideas; and are apter and apter, with 
each passing day, to forget that they only hold 
power in a representative capacity. Now this is 
all wrong. I go into these promiscuous receptions 
of all who claim to have business with me twice 
each week, and every applicant for audience has 
to take his turn as if waiting to be shaved in a 
barber's shop. Many of the matters brought to 
my notice are utterly frivolous, but others are of 
more or less importance ; and all serve to renew 
in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great 
popular assemblage out of which I sprang, and to 
which at the end of two years I must return. I 
tell you, Major," he said — appearing at this point 
to recollect I was in the room, for the former part 
of these remarks had been made with half-shut 
eyes, as if in soliloquy — " I tell you that I call 
these receptions my public-opinion baths — for I 
have but little time to read the papers and gather 
public opinion that way; and, though they may 
not be pleasant in all their particulars, the effect 
as a whole is renovating and invigorating to my 
perceptions of responsibility and duty. It would 
never do for a President to have guards with 
drawn sabres at his door, as if he fancied he were, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF ME. LINCOLN. 107 

or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an 
emperor." 

This remark about " guards with drawn sabres 
at his door " called my attention afresh to what I 
had remarked to myself almost every time I 
entered the White House, both then and since ; 
and to which I had very frequently called the 
attention both of Major Hay and General Halleck : 
— the utterly unprotected condition of the Presi- 
dent's person, and the fact that any assassin or 
maniac, seeking his life, could enter his presence 
without the interference of a single armed man to 
hold him back. The entrance-doors, and all doors 
on the official side of the building, were open at 
all hours of the day and very late into the eve- 
ning ; and I have many times entered the mansion 
and walked up to the rooms of the two private 
secretaries, as late as nine or ten o'clock at night, 
without seeing or being challenged by a single 
soul. There were, indeed, two attendants — one 
for the outer door, and the other for the door of 
the official chambers ; but these, thinking, I sup- 
pose, that none would call after office-hours save 
persons who were personally acquainted, or had 
the right of official entry — were, not unfrequently, 
somewhat remiss in their duties. 

To this fact I now ventured to call the Presi- 
dent's attention, raying that to me — perhaps 
from my European education — it appeared a deli- 



108 RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. LINCOLN. 

berate courting of danger, even if the country 
were in a state of the profoundest peace, for the 
person at the head of the nation to remain so 
unprotected. 

" Even granting, Mr. Lincoln," I said, " that no 
assassin should seek your life, the large number 
of lunatics always in a community, and always 
larger in times like these, and the tendency which 
insanity has to strike at shining objects, or whom- 
soever is most talked about, should lead — I sub- 
mit — to some guards about the place, and to some 
permanent officers with the power and duty of 
questioning all who seek to enter." To this I 
added some brief sketch of the all but innumera- 
ble crazy letters and projects which were continu- 
ally being received at General Halleck's head- 
quarters, and which he had one day laughingly 
turned over to me, on the ground that I now and 
then wrote verses. 

" There are two dangers, therefore," I wound 
up by saying ; " the danger of deliberate political 
assassination, and the mere brute violence of in- 
sanity." 

Mr. Lincoln had heard me with a smile, his 
hands still locked across his knees, and his body 
still rocking back and forth — the common indica- 
tion that he was amused. 

" Now, as to political assassination," he said, 
" do you think the Richmond people would like 



RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. LINCOLN. 109 

to have Hannibal Hamlin here any better than 
myself? In that one alternative, I have an in- 
surance on my life worth half the prairie-land of 
Illinois? And besides " — this more gravely — " if 
there were such a plot, and they wanted to get at 
me, no vigilance could keep them out. We are 
so mixed up in our affairs, that — no matter what 
the system established — a conspiracy to assassinate, 
if such there were, could easily obtain a pass to 
see me for any one or more of its instruments. 
To betray fear of this, by placing guards, and so 
forth, would only be to put the idea into their 
heads, and perhaps lead to the very result it was 
mtended to prevent. As to the crazy folks, 
Major, why I must only take my chances — the 
worst crazy people I at present fear being some of 
my own too zealous adherents. That there may 
be such dangers as you and many others have 
suggested to me, is quite possible ; but I guess it 
wouldn't improve things any, to publish that we 
were afraid of them in advance." 

At this point the President turned to the papers 
I had brought over for his signature, and signing 
them handed them to me with some message for 
General Halleck. Whereupon I bowed myself 
out, and the stream of omnium-gatherum human- 
ity from the waiting-rooms again commenced flow- 
ing in upon him — sometimes in individual, some- 
times in deputation al or collective waves. 



110 RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. LINCOLN. 

The whole interview I have here narrated, 
though taking so much longer to tell, had proba- 
bly not endured over ten or fifteen minutes ; and 
it was the first, although not the only time, that 
I heard Mr. Lincoln discuss the possibility of an 
attempt to assassinate him. 

The second time was when he came over one 
evening after dinner to General Halleck's private 
quarters to protest— half jocularly, half in earnest — 
against a small detachment of cavalry which had 
been detailed without his request, and partly 
against his will, by the lamented General Wads- 
worth, as a guard for his carriage in going to and 
returning from the Soldiers' Home. The burden 
of his complaint was that he and Mrs. Lincoln 
" couldn't hear themselves talk " for the clatter of 
their sabres and spurs; and that, as many of them 
appeared new hands and very awkward, he was 
more afraid of being shot by the accidental dis- 
charge of one of their carbines or revolvers, than 
of any attempt upon his life, or for his capture, by 
the roving squads of Jeb Stuart's cavalry, then 
hovering all round the exterior earth-works of 
the city. 

This conversation is related, as reproduced by 
a memory of perhaps more than average tenacity, 
precisely as the writer would re -word the matter 
if called upon to give evidence thereanent in a 
court of justice. Nothing has been added to it. 



EECOLLECTIOXS OF MR. LINCOLN. Ill 

nor anything suppressed, tliat I can recollect. 
The President's remarks — perhaps soliloquy were 
the better term — relative to the necessity of con- 
stant intercommunication with the average people 
of the country, made a deep impression on me ; 
and his calling these general receptions his "pub- 
lic-opinion baths," was a phrase not soon to be 
forgotten. 

From the 25th of August, 1862, until relieved 
from G-eneral Halleck's staff — late in December 
of the same year — the writer had the good for- 
tune of enjoying frequent opportunities of see- 
ing and hearing Mr. Lincoln; and more especially 
during the dark days from General Pope's disas- 
trous defeats at the second Bull Eun and Chantilly 
until after the enemy, beaten by McClellan at 
Antietam, had again been driven south. During 
all this period the President, accompanied by 
either Major Hay or Mr. Nicolay, spent some 
hours several evenings in each week at General 
Halleck's private quarters ; and it certainly is not 
too much to say that the more any candid mind 
saw of Mr. Lincoln — even if opposed to his poli- 
tical views — the more deeply must it have become 
impressed by the homely honesty, kindliness, 
force, shrewdness, originality, humor, and self- 
sacrificing patriotism of that great and good man's 
character. 



PROFESSORS AGASSIZ AND LONGFEL- 
LOW. 

CALL ON A NEW ENGLAND POET FOR HIS FRENCH 

VERSES. 

A distinguished poet of New England — whose 
modesty in this matter, we regret to say, will not 
allow us to disclose his name or give his verses in 
their original tongue — sent a present of six bottles 
of choice wines last Christmas Eve to his friend 
Professor Agassiz, accompanying the donation, 
good and acceptable in itself, with a copy of origi- 
nal French verses amusingly descriptive of the 
various liquors. These verses, in French, by a 
poet, and a very high one, of New England, acci- 
dentally fell some few months ago under the notice 
of our disorderly ex-Orderly Private Miles 
O'Reilly, who immediately proposed that all the 
literary gentlemen who were present at the weekly 
reunion whereat the copy was shown (for they 
had then never been published, though printed for 
private circulation), should take home a copy with 
him ; and that each should bring a translation of 
the same to the next weekly meeting. This was 
at once agreed to, apparently with enthusiasm, by 



PROFESSORS AGASSIZ AND LONGFELLOW. 113 

all present ; bat the Boy Himself was the only 
one who finally complied with the general stipu- 
lation, and he now asks ns to give notice that, 
unless the gentlemen then present who agreed to 
the bargain, and " whose names are omitted by 
particular request," send in within a week from 
date their several translations of said French 
verses to Agassiz by a poet of New England, 
said Boy will find himself compelled to commence 
actions against each and every one of them for 
having obtained from him "a translation under 
false pretences." Meantime, to give each and all 
of them courage — as the rashest, foolishest, and 
most good-natured youngster is always first to 
jump in and try the coldness of the water at the 
commencement of each bathing-season — we here 
append Private O'Eeilly's English version of the 
really excellent and graceful French lines of the 
New England poet, who shall be nameless, — any 
further than to remark that he is not a Short- 
fellow :* 

CHRISTMAS. 

When the stars of Christmas night 
Shone with palpitating Hght, 

* Since this was first in type, Professor Longfellow has pub- 
lished his French Hnes. They may be found in the AUa/rdic 
Monthly for October, 1865. 



114 PROFESSORS AGASSIZ AND LONGFELLOW. 

Six good fellows, liquor-lost, 
Sang beneath the silvery frost — 

" Comrades, we 
Should go right off to Agassiz I" 

These foreign pilgrims, gay and bold, 
Eound-bellied as the monks of old, 
With silver cowls and priestly air, 
All vied in boasting that they were — 

" Friends are we 
To good Jean Rudolphe Agassiz." 

Partridge-eye, great Merr}'- Andrew ! 
Finer tipple never man drew I 
In his Burgundy patois vilely 
Stammered — worse than Miles O'Eeilly — 

" Hear all ye ! 
I have danced with Agassiz." 

Verzenay with leaping cork — 
French that never saw New York, 
Fresh from the vintage of Avize, 
Quavers again and again to these — 

''Hark to me! 
I have sung with Agassiz." 

Then there came in sober sort 
An old hidalgo — grave his Port I 
Whose sires, in the age of Charlemagne, 
Were grandees of chivaJric Spain — 

" Room for me ! 
I have dined with Agassiz." 



PROFESSORS AGASSIZ AND LONGFELLOW. 115 

Next advanced a Bordeaux Grascon — 
Type of such if you would ask one 1 
Perfumed and with music- rife, 
Laughing, singing, full of life — 

"Envy me! 
I have supped with Agassiz." 

With this auburn-headed boy, 
Arm in arm — a foe to joy, 
Haughty, yellow-hued, and stern, 
Marched the cynic lord, Sauterne — 

" Hence, all ye ! 
I have slept with Agassiz." 

Last, and full of pious fire. 
Came an old Carthusian friar, 
Who bellowed, in a tone robust, 
" Benedictions on the just ! 
Friends all we 
Should go and bless Sire Agassiz." 

In threes they started as they were. 
And chmbed the wooden stoop and stair, 
Hobbling and squabbhng — " What gendarme, - 
Will allow such uproar and alarm 

Thus to be 
Raised at the door of Agassiz." 

" Open," they cried, " Oh, master dear! 
Open quickly, and do not fear ! 
Open to us, and soon you'll find 
We are comrades worthy your noble mind — 

Friends are we 
To all in the house of Agassiz." 



116 PROFESSORS AGASSIZ AND LONGFELLOW. 

" Hush, ye babblers I and be quiet, 
There is too much of your riot ; 
From the learned you'll win no trophies 
By your abominable strophes — 

Hence all ye ! 
And respect the peace of Agassiz." 

From the foregoing it will be seen that our 
"New England poet has not a bad taste in select- 
ing a wine-bouquet for a friend, as, indeed, in 
what matter (save in not allowing us to publish 
his original French in company with this transla- 
tion), is his taste not excellent? Commencing 
with (Eil de Perdrix, or Partridge-eye, as a foun- 
dation beverage; next introducing the bubbling 
deliciousness of Yerzenay from the vintage of 
Avize — Yerzenay "that never saw New York," 
and to which the apple-orchards and cider-presses 
of New Jersey are but vague traditions of no 
application ; then after that, solemnly bringing 
in the old, rubicund, full-bodied, and stately- 
ported hidalgo from Spain as a counterpoise to 
the frivolity and effervescence of the previous 
visitor ; next warming up and rather illuminating 
the too serious gravity and weight of the hidalgo's 
character by a dash of the perfumed fopj gallant, 
and gasconading braggart from Bordeaux, whose 
tendency to extravagant merriment and freedom, 
however, is soon checked and chilled by the 
appearance on the scene of action of that sour, 



PROFESSORS AGASSIZ AND LONGFELLOW. 117 

stern, and yellow-hued ''cynic lord, Sauterne." 
Lastly, to wind np with and to harmonize the 
whole — to put the finishing stroke on the ultimate 
delights and blisses of perfect digestion, and to 
guard the cuticle from cold as the guests oscillate 
home from the glowing dinner-party through the 
keen bright frosts of that Christmas night — why, 
to accomplish all these blessings, what agent better 
than ^^ un pauvre Charireux^^ — that "poor Carthu- 
sian friar" — could he have possibly selected ? We 
think the distinguished New England poet in 
question, on whose French verses and taste in 
wines we have thus commented, does himself and 
the public a wrong in not allowing us to lay 
before our readers and the rest of the world this 
rarely excellent jeu d^esprit of his muse in a 
foreign tongue. It would take something more 
than an inelegancy, or even inaccuracy — supposing 
there were any perceivable by Parisian ears — in 
a few French lines written for such a social occa- 
sion as this, to cost their respected author any leaf 
from the wreath he has so nobly earned in his 
native tongue. 



SUMMER NOTES FEOM THE SEA-SIDE. 

[In the August of 1868, Private Miles wanted a, 
fortnight's furlough to go sea-bathing at Newport, 
and gave a glowing picture of the pleasures of 
that occupation (in the right kind of society) to 
Col. John C. Kelton of the Adjutant-General's 
Department of the Old Army, who was the 
officer with power to grant his wishes. Kelton 
had never been at the sea-side, and consequently 
knew nothing of the sport — his duties taking him 
away to our far- western frontier immediately after 
his graduation from the Military Academy. After 
some trouble, therefore, as is usual in such cases, 
the furlough was finally granted on condition that 
the writer should report his sea-bathing sensations 
at Newport to his superior officer — a condition 
which was thus fulfilled.] 

My dear Col. Kelton : but lately I dwelt on 
The pleasures of tripping through breakers and dipping, 
Some stately brunette, or gay blonde — better yet — 
Tn the surf and the surges fi-om which she emerges 
Her bright eyes half blinded, 
Her cheeks salt and rosy, 
Her hair — never mind it — 
She's fresh as a Posie ! 



SUMMER NOTES FROM THE SEA-SIDE. Ill) 

On your arm loosely swinging, her garments close clinging, 
The waves have betrayed her — each delicate rounding, 
She is just as God made her, with beauty abounding ! 
No lace, UQ illusion, but charms in profusion ; 
No hoops to enshroud her, no rouge or pearl powder ; 
All milliner traces 

Of fashion have flown. 
And in all its true graces 
Her beauty is shown ; 
A new Aphrodite 

She shines on the shore — 
O sea nymph ! Nereide I 
We bow and adore. 

Supreme of all pleasures, best wealth of all wealth, 
Unspeakable treasures of youth and of health ! 
The blue, brawny billows — calm steady old fellows — 
The moment they find her awaiting their shock 
In their strong arms to wind her so eagerly flock 
That they break into clamors, 

And rise silver crested, 
And with all ocean's glamours 
Of splendor invested — 
They chase and pursue her, swirl round her and woo her, 
Bright wreaths o'er her twining in hoarse tones they praise 

her. 
And high in their shining white fore-arms upraise her. 

They raise her, aspiring 

To throne her on shore. 
Then, slowly retiring. 
Again with a roar, 
To her feet they surge onward, their crests sparkling sun- 
ward. 



120 SUMMER NOTES FROM THE SEA-SIDE. 

Swirl up to her knee, to her waist, to her shoulder — 
Alas I woe is me that my heart is not colder ! 

That it is not so cold 
As to calmly behold 

These lords of the sea 

With her charms making free — 

Denied and for ever denied unto me ! 
That my hands may not fold her dear tresses of gold 
To my heart, to my breast, there securely to rest, 
Her tenderness shielded, her passion confessed ! 

'Tis worth all our long marches. 
Hard fare and repining, 
Our trenching and mining, 
To see the bright arches 

Of silver spray shining, 
All round and above her. 

As if the rude waves 
Did humanly love her 
And were but her slaves ! 
So get wounded, my boy, and a furlough obtain, 
Such moments of joy are worth treble the pain : 
Let a ball through you glance, keeping clear of the bones- 
Just enough for romance (with occasional moans), 
And you'll find it, I tell you. 
Of all that befell you 
The luckiest day you have met in your life, 
If you are, as you say, "now in search of a wife. " 



HONEST TEUTH ABOUT YE "FLAUNT- 
ING LIE." 

THE TOCSIN-PEALS OF TEN YEARS AGO. 

As certain Democratic journals and orators 
throughout the country have seen fit to attach 
undue importance and a totally garbled construc- 
tion to an extract from a certain song which ap- 
peared many years ago in the iV] Y. Tribune^ it may 
be as well at this point to place on record a true 
copy of that song, and a history of the events out of 
which it grew, together with copies of certain other 
songs on the same subject, forming a series of 
which the much-quoted lyric was but a part. 

The first song of the series appeared in the 
Consulate of Franklin Pierce, and was called out 
by the circumstances attending the capture and 
imprisonment of one Anthony Burns, an alleged 
fugitive slave from Virginia. This arrest created 
intense excitement in Boston, insomuch that nearly 
all business was suspended during its pendency. 
The people and State aaithorities of the great Old 
Commonwealth were perfectly willing to obey the 
Fugitive Slave Law, provided its provisions were 
properly complied with, and the accused given 
6 



122 YE 

some chance of proving, if he could, that he was 
not the character he had been taken for. This, 
however, was not the policy of the then Federal 
officials, who conducted the whole case with an 
overbearing insolence and disregard of the popular 
feelings which seemed to court an armed collision. 
While the excitement was at its highest, a Boston 
paper announced, with high commendation, that 
*' two companies of foreign-born soldiers had been 
stationed in and around the Court-House to keep 
back the rabble " — this " rabble," we may remark, 
embracing seven-eighths of all that was most emi- 
nent in the learning, piety, public confidence, and 
respectability of the Trimontane City. Taking 
these words of the paper for his text, the author 
of this series wrote and sent to The Independent 
the following verses, which he called : 

LINES FOR THE DAY. 

Aye ! throng the courts, that once were free, 
With bands of savage soldiery — 

Call out the foreign kern ! 
Beneath the shade of Bunker shaft, 
Where earth the blood of freemen quaffed, 

A different tale this day we learn. 

Crush Massachusetts under foot, 
Destroy our freedom, branch and root, 
The Northern mind is bowed ; 



YE " FLAUNTING LIE." 123 

No more the Pilgrim banner waves, 
Content we see our fathers' graves 

By Slavery's groaning cannon plowed. 

Oh ! Massachusetts, Mother home I 
The rocks that dash to whitening foam 

Those seas the Mayflower pressed — 
Those very rocks cry out to-day, 
The waves dash high their glittering spray. 

To see thy weakness thus confessed. 

And shall Yirginia's jeering lords. 
Backed and sustained by foreign swords, 

Thy ancient soul subdue ? 
Shall hireling steel and Southern fraud 
Eevcrse the mandate given by Grod — 

" Do as ye would men do to you !" 

Oh 1 never, while to misery's sob 
Our eyes o'erflow, our pulses throb. 

Can come a day so cursed ; 
While hope remains, while arms are strong, 
While lives the sense of right and wrong. 

These fetters be it ours to burst I 

We have been patient, and our peace 
Mistaken was for cowardice — 

We try a different tense ; 
The passive mood hath brought us chains, 
The active now alone remains 

To bring these tyrants back to sense. 

Up, Massachusetts, up and arm ! 
Let every steeple toll the alarm, 
Rally thy freemen soon ! 



124 



Old Boston, as you hope to live, 
Ne'er let that frightened fugitive 

In fetters quit your barracoon ! 

Whether our rights we now defend, "*" 

Or if the North must yet descend 

From depth to lower deeps ; 
Kemember this — nor be you dumb 
In the great struggle yet to come — 

With us the South no promise keeps. 

This song, immediately republished in the Tri- 
hune^ achieved a sudden and immense popularity, 
being widely copied in the journals of the day, 
and largely quoted from in the adverse speeches 
of party orators. It was a veritable " tocsin peal," 
and was answered by an uprising of popular opi- 
nion such as is rarely witnessed. 

"While these matters were going on in Boston, 
a wretch to whose name we afford the charity of 
oblivion, committed in one night a succession of 
crimes at the bare recital of which the imagina- 
tion shudders. The scene of the occurrence was 
in the vicinity of Flatbush, Long Island. The 
monster entered a house in which be had formerly 
been employed as a servant, for the double pur- 
pose of robbing his master and outraging a young 
girl who had been his fellow-servant and had 
rejected his addresses. During the perpetration 
of these crimes, his former master and mistress 
were aroused, whereupon he split their heads open 



YE ''flaunting lie." 125 

with a meat-axe, otherwise mangling them fright- 
fully, and then attempted to kill the girl he had 
tried to ravish ; after which he set fire to the house 
in order to destroy the lifeless proofs of his guilt. 

A horror so aggravated aroused all the neigh- 
boring citizens to fury. Hundreds organized them- 
selves into a searching party, and hunted for the 
villain through the swamp in which he had taken 
refuge. He was at last found, after two or three 
days' search, hidden up to his neck in mud ; and 
bleeding profusely from some wounds self-inflicted, 
by which he hoped to cheat the gallows. On being 
caught he at once confessed his crimes, and it was 
for a moment debated as to whether he should not 
be lynched upon the spot. The spirit of law and 
justice prevailed, however, and it was decided to 
give him a fair trial and an opportunity for counsel 
to defend him. 

The very same paper that gave particulars of 
this tragedy, described, also, how Anthony Burns, 
without any fair trial, had been ordered back to 
slavery on the mere affidavit of a citizen of Vir- 
ginia, claiming to be his owner, and the arbitrary 
decision of a Commissioner, who was paid an extra 
five dollars by law for deciding against the black 
man. All Boston closed its places of business on 
the day that the military procession appeared as 
an escort for Anthony Burns from the Court- House 
to the wharf. The black man was in the centre 



126 YE 

of a square of infantry. Two sections of artillery, 
loaded with grape, were paraded to repress any 
popular outburst. Meanwhile appeared on nearly 
every house-top the United States flag at half- 
mast, while over Faneuil Hall, the old " Cradle of 
Liberty," the same flag was displayed at half-mast 
and completely enshrouded in crape. 

On these simultaneous events were written the 
verses (originally published in the Tribune) 
which we now subjoin : 

THE CONTRAST. 

These are two pictures roughly drawn, 
Two scenes to meditate upon : 

No rainbow tints o'erflood 
The breathing figures they reveal : 
The pencil was assassin steel, 

The palette swam in blood ! 

LONG ISLAND. 

Crouched in the swamp, amid the fern, 
What hideous features we discern, 

Torn, filthy, and aghast — 
How brutiishly his eyeballs glare, 
As still he shrinks within his lair, 

'Till those who hunt have passed I 

And there are shouts and thrilling cries 
As hunting group to group replies — 
His covert they have hemmed ; 



127 



They hunt a monster steeped in crime, 
And find him, groveUing in the slime, 
Self-wounded, self-condemned. 

What tongue describe the midnight scene, 
When first the murderer crept within 

That home of peaceful life ? 
When the dull meat-axe fell amain 
Through the crushed bone and spattering brain 

Of husband and of wife ! 

No matter — let the law decide ! 
Though he confesses how they died. 

Although his guilt appears ; 
Let judges sit and counsel plan, 
And let him answer as he can, 

A jury of his peers. 



NEW ENGLAND. 

Our Boston streets are mute to-day, 
Though tens of thousands throng the way, 

Our flags are draped with crape ; 
No sound except the death-bell's toll, 
The tramp of soldiers, and the roll 

Of cannon brimmed with grape. 

Lo I as the fettered black appears 
Amid the square of serried spears, 

How heaves the multitude ! 
They seek with flowers to strew his track, 
But levelled bayonets drive them back — 

Is his the crime of blood ? 



128 YE 

Worse than all crimes ! his skin is dark, 
And Southern fraud has set her mark 

Upon his fettered limbs. 
Pampered and fed by Federal might, 
Her Ark of Liberty and Right 

On slavery's red-sea swims ! 

Nor does the man-thief even avow 
That guilt has stained that ebon brow — 

The crime is in the skin ; 
Yet, monster ! hungering for your prey, 
A whiter heart than yours to-day 

That bosom beats within 1 



For him no trial — never pause — 
Rough-ride New England's honored laws, 

Make of our tears your mirth 1 
Our first-born Freedom ye have slain — 
But in the " Cradle " once again 

We swear to rock a nobler birth. 

The troubles of Franklin Pierce and Company 
were not yet half over, in reference to this poor 
" colored American of African descent." On the 
trial being made, it was found that no ship or 
steamer in Boston could be hired for the purpose 
of carrying this alleged fugitive back to slavery. 
The universal cry was : " Give him a trial. De- 
mand from the Yirginian that he shall give as 
much proof of ownership as would be required 
to recover a stray dog ! Comply only with these 



YE "flaunting lie." 129 

requisitions, and we bow as in duty bound to the 
supremacy of the laws of the Union." 

Matters having arrived at this pass, Caleb 
Gushing and Company had nothing for it but the 
conversion of a national armed vessel into a slave 
ship. The Morris was ordered to Boston for the 
sole purpose of carrying back to Virginia this one 
miserable wretch — alleged to be a fugitive from 
slavery. Picture — those who know anything of 
the Old Bay State — the horror created by this 
ignominious desecration of a national ship ! The 
flag that had waved over slippery and smoking 
decks in our early conflicts with Great Britain — 
the flag to which our earliest and noblest captains 
had lifted their eyes for inspiration through the 
hot hours of many a bloody sea-fight — for that flag 
Caleb Cushing and Company could find no better 
business ten years ago than to cover, at the mast- 
head of the Morris^ this isolated instance of the 
slave-trade carried on in an armed vessel of the 
Nation. 

Just think of it ! Bear in mind all the sur- 
roundings of the case ; and then read the following 
lines, first published in the Tribune^ June 13, 
1854, with such comment and such appetites as 
your natures may suggest. Taken as a whole, 
and not merely looking at the three garbled 
stanzas which a portion of the press saw fit to 
give as the entire poem, it will be seen that the 
6* 



130 YE 

lines are really a glowing tribute to the glory and 
greatness of our national banner ; a glowing pro- 
test against its desecration in one particular in- 
stance. 

HAIL TO THE STARS AND STRIPES * 

[The U. S. cutter Morris has been ordered by President 
Franklin Pierce to carry Anthony Burns from Boston to 
Virginia, to be there enslaved for ever. — Boston Common- 
wealth.'] 

Hail to the Stars and Stripes ! 

The boastful flag all hail ! 
The tyrant trembles now, 

And at the sight grows pale ; 
The Old World groans in pain, 

And turns her eye to see. 
Beyond the Western Main, 

This emblem of the Free. 

Hail to the Stripes and Stars ! 

Hope beams in every ray, 
And through the dungeon bars 

Points out a brighter way. 
The Old World sees the light 

That shall her cells illume. 
And, shrinking back to night, 

Oppression reads her doom. 

* This song has received the comphment of being the only 
one copied in the first volume of Horace Greeley's " History of 
the American Conflict," being given as a sample of the spirit 
aroused by the excessive exactions. 



YE "FLAUNTING LIE." 131 

Hail to the Stars and Stripes I 

Tiiey float in every sea ; 
O'er every ocean sweeps 

Our emblem of the Free. 
Beneath the azure skies 

Of the soft Italian clime, 
Or where the Aurora dies 

In sohtude sublime. 



All hail the flaunting Lie I 

The Stars grow pale and dim — 
The Stripes are bloody scars, 

A lie the flaunting hymn ! 
It shields a pkate's deck, 

It binds a man in chains, 
And round the captive's neck 

Its folds are bloody stains. 

Tear down the flaunting Lie ! 

Half-mast the starry flag ! 
Insult no sunny sky 

With this polluted rag I 
Destroy it, ye who can I 

Deep sink it in the waves ! 
It bears a fellow-man 

To groan with fellow-slaves. 

Awake the burning scorn — 
The vengeance long and deep, 

That, till a better morn. 
Shall neither tire nor sleep 1 



132 YE "flaunting lie." 

Swear once again the vow, 

By all we hope or dream, 
That what we suffer now 

The future shall redeem. 

Furl, fori the boasted Lie, 

Till Freedom hves again, 
With stature grand and purpose high 

Among untrammelled men ! 
Roll up the starry sheen, 

Conceal its bloody stains; 
For in its folds are seen 

The stamp of rusting chains. 

Swear, Freemen — all as one — 

To spurn the flaunting Lie, 
TiU Peace, and Truth, and Love 

ShaU fill the brooding sky ; 
Then, floating in the air, 

O'er hill, and dale, and sea, 
'Twill stand for ever fair, 

The emblem of the Free ! 

To all of treason, disloyalty, or contempt for 
the national flag that the enemies of human free- 
dom can find in the foregoing verses, we bid them 
heartily welcome. They have never heretofore 
published more than a few stanzas, and even 
those few were garbled and twisted out of their 
proper sense and connection. The copy now sub- 
mitted is from a revise by the author ; and as — 
for good or evil — this song has passed into the 



YE ** FLAUNTING LIE." 133 

history of our country and age, we think those 
who have misquoted extracts from it should let 
the whole of it be seen in its rightful shape. 

And now for the last of the "tocsin-peals" 
rung out in the columns of the Tribune. 

On the arrival of the Morris in the South, with 
her black prisoner duly fettered on board, there 
was tremendous rejoicing through all slavedom — 
late Jeffdom. All the orators and bards of the 
" Chivalry" made speeches and wrote songs in 
honor of their victory over the law-abiding citi- 
zens of the old Bay State. Joy-bells were rung, 
bonfires kindled, windows were illuminated, much 
whiskey consumed — and the friends of Franklin 
Pierce thought his renomination certain. There 
was joy in the White House, but mourning in 
the best hearts of New England. That a fugitive 
slave, duly proved to be such, should be returned, 
was a necessity in which very nearly all New 
England acquiesced. But that a Southern master 
should be sustained by the Federal Executive in 
seizing a man in the streets of Boston, and hur- 
rying him away without any substantial proofs of 
his identity or former servitude — this cup was a 
bitter one, but President Pierce and Caleb Cush- 
ing made Massachusetts drink of it to the very 
dregs. 

On the receipt of Anthony Burns in the Old 
Dominion, he was solemnly turned over from the 



134 YE 

custody of National bayonets to that of the local 
militia, an organization with which the ISTorth has 
since become pretty thoroughly acquainted at 
Manassas, Antietam, Malvern Hill, Fredericks- 
burg, the Wilderness, and elsewhere. By these 
military scions of First Families of Virginia he 
was ostentatiously escorted to the plantation of his 
alleged owner ; and it was on the report of the 
joyous and triumphal ceremonies then and there 
enacted that the following verses were struck off 
and given to the public in the Tribune. 

THE CURTAIN FALLS. 

Hark I how the joy-bells of the South 
Speak victory with brazen mouth I 

What tyrant have they slain ? 
What conquered monarch comes to-day 
Begirt by all this plumed array 

Of proud and weaponed men ? 

Those joybells ! Once I heard them ring 
When Britain's dull and savage King 

Loosed from our throat his grip ; 
Then sabres gleamed — then Kingship fell^ 
And are they pealed once more to tell 

This Victory of the Whip? 

Behold him in the centre, there ! 
The fettered image of despair, 
While round him hotly flows, 



135 



That " Chivalry " the Southrons boast — 
And on the flag that leads the host 
The name of " Freedom" glows ! 

Aye ! lead him where the lilacs bloom 
Around Mount Yernon's silent tomb — 

G-reen be those trees and fresh ! 
And there, with oaths as fierce as deep, 
Salute the mouldering tenant's sleep 

With bids for human flesh ! 

Who cares for Boston ? though her cry, 
Her wail of bitter agony. 

Through all the welkin swells ! 
She dared not face our shotted guns — 
We drown the murmur of her sons 

With shouts and clanging bells. 

No respite — no surcease of woe 1 
* And shall it be for ever so ? 

Was this the Pilgrim faith ? 
Shall Freedom's votaries still despair, 
And must the living North yet bear 

This yoke with moral death ? 

From the foregoing history, it will be seen that 
the '* Flaunting-Lie" story of the Copperhead jour- 
nals and orators was a " flaunting lie " indeed. It 
will also be seen that, far from being an utterance 
in contempt of the flag, it was a cry of sorrowful 
indignation at beholding the desecration of that 
sacred emblem. This statement we have felt due 
to the truth of history, as also to relieve Mr. Gree- 



136 YE 

ley from much undeserved obloquy ; and now the 
subject stands dismissed, with only this concluding 
remark : All four songs were tossed out, we 
believe, in the heat and hurry of daily journalism, 
and have this eminent value: that, however 
deficient they may be in literary merit or polish, 
they give a trae, permanent, and intensified 
expression to what were the convictions of the 
popular mind on a subject which must for ever 
remain of the highest interest. 



LOUIS NAPOLEON'S " LIFE OF CJESAE." 

DYNASTIC DELUSIONS OF THE EMPEROR. 

The many who will persist in regarding Louis 
Napoleon as merely an Emperor, in the common 
sense of the word, do him far less than justice, 
and take their observations of his character from 
a stand-point which must for ever prevent their 
forming a true appreciation of his motives and 
the probable outcome of his acts. He is essen- 
tially a philosopher who speculates in systems of 
government ; a literary man who, happily or 
unhappily for himself, has obtained power to test 
the various dynastic theories which he has formed 
during a dreamy life, by the arbitrament of fleets, 
armies, edicts, and schemes of finance — all the 
moral and material resources of a powerful but 
fickle people. To the subjects of government as 
a science, and the perpetuation of dynasties as an 
art, he would seem from his earliest days to have 
devoted all the energies of a plodding but not 
brilliant intellect — an intellect in which we find 
the infidelity and audacity which marked the 
France of twenty years before his birth, curiously 
contrasted with an almost reverential study of the 



138 LOUIS napoleon's 

lessons of history, and a touchingly credulous 
acquiescence in whatever may appear to be the 
necessities which those lessons would impose. 

That faith in the " Napoleonic star " which, 
with the stronger Uncle, was in great part a thea- 
trical assumption, designed to give confidence to 
his followers in times of peril, would seem to have 
been accepted by the weaker N'ephew as a reli- 
gious truth — a truth both historical and philoso- 
phic, on the sufficient basis of which a permanent 
imperial dynasty for France may with safety be 
constructed. For this theory he seeks support in 
the analogies of history — his retrospection conti- 
nually studying and reproducing the motives and 
maxims of his Uncle, as in the volume entitled 
" Napoleonic Ideas ;" and his slow intellect never 
seeming to tire of analyzing the lives of Julius Cae- 
sar and Charlemagne, as the two great military and 
imperial characters in whose designs and successes 
may be found the closest parallels to the achieve- 
ments of the elder Napoleon. For the written 
results of his researches into the history and times 
of Charlemagne, Parisian rumor says we may have 
yet some years to wait ; but already we know 
there is in press a " History of Caesar " from Louis 
Napoleon's pen — the design of this last imperial 
literary effort being, as we imagine, to prove : 
that as the First Napoleon was, in his conquests 
and final fate, a rather close counterpart of the 



LOUIS napoleon's " LIFE OF C^SAR." 139 

First Cassar ; so in the Second [N'apoleon we may 
expect to see revived the peaceful glories, irresis- 
tible sway, artistic and material progress, and con- 
solidating influences of the Augustan era. 

For this conjecture as to the object and intended 
moral of the forthcoming work, we have no other 
ground than a pretty accurate study of Louis 
ISTapoleon's character and a just estimate of the cir- 
cumstances under which he writes. Occupying 
the most perplexing and unstable throne in Europe, 
a prey to physical maladies and devoured by a 
desire to perpetuate his dynasty in the person of 
his son, the French imperial litterateur flies to his 
pen, at once as a relief from oppressing cares and 
as an instrument which may be made useful in 
giving popularity to his ideas. That the views 
which, we doubt not, his edition of Caesar will be 
found to contain are plausible on their face, is not 
to be denied. As the Eoman conqueror laid the 
foundations of his greatness by victoriously carry- 
ing the eagles of his country over France, Spain, 
Germany, and Britain, while at home all was mutiny 
and chaos in the expiring republic of the munici- 
pality of Kome ; so the elder Napoleon dazzled the 
eyes of France by his successes in Italy and else- 
where, at a period when the democratic govern- 
ment in Paris had become the very incarnation of 
oppression without purpose, and imbecility from 
which there could be no appeal. 



140 



In the manner of their obtaining imperial 
power — for Csesar had long held it in fact, though 
assassinated under a suspicion of desiring to assume 
it in title — there is the strictest possible analogy 
between the histories of the first Eoman and the 
first French Emperors. Both were first-class mili- 
tary conquerors, and both poor statesmen; both 
had achieved triumphs abroad while chaos ruled 
at home; both were called upon to return and 
assume the direction of affairs by the all but unani- 
mous cry of a people who could nowhere else see 
any hope of stability ; both committed the mistake 
of believing themselves the creators and not the 
creatures of the circumstances by which they found 
themselves surrounded ; and both paid the penalty 
of their lives — Caesar, the more happy, under sud- 
den blows, and Napoleon in the long exile of St. 
Helena — for having failed to realize that the time 
in which each lived was not the proper time for 
the experiment of personal aggrandizement which 
each attempted. 

Different epochs and conditions of society call 
for and produce new forms of government. Eome 
had originally been governed by kings, of whom 
Tarquinius Superbus was the last. £F^en came 
four hundred years of a so-called republican gov- 
ernment, which was just terminating, utterly effete 
and exhausted, when Ca3sar stepped upon the stage. 
It was not a republic in any true sense — the muni- 



LIFE OF C^SAR." 141 

cipality of Eome giving laws to the empire, bat a 
few aristocratic families holding the votes of all 
other Roman citizens in complete subjection. 
Caesar judged a change of government to be immi- 
nent, and in this he was right ; but he contem- 
plated a return in his own person to the former 
system of a kingship, and here was his error. 
Nations, no more than individuals, repeat in the 
progress of their lives the passions or the follies 
of past eras. Rome did not want a king ; and, 
speaking by the hand of Brutus, Caesar was blood- 
ily rebuked for supposing he could make himself 
a successor to the last of the Tarquins. But Rome 
did want a change of government ; the hour had 
become ripe for producing a new system of rule ; 
and in the person of Augustus, and with the title 
of "Imperator," or general-in-chief, borrowed from 
the camps, and only suggesting military ascend- 
ency, the Roman people passed cheerfully under 
the yoke of an empire — that being the form of 
government which most clearly realized their aspi- 
rations for universal conquest. 

In France and with the elder Napoleon the case 
was different. There the kingship of the Capets, 
accompanied by the oppressions of a feudal aristo- 
cracy, had become effete, and all Frenchmen needed 
a change. The republic, in the days of its infancy, 
was assailed by powerful combinations of foreign 
foes and domestic traitors. It absolutely needed 



142 LOUIS napoleon's "life of cjesar." 

for its guidance through that bitter period the firm 
hand and absolute will of a successful military 
chief This want the elder Napoleon supplied: 
and history tells us how generous was his welcome, 
how boundless the homage, almost the idolatry, 
France poured at his feet. But as Csesar, mistak- 
enly, under similar circumstances, supposed Kome 
to need a king — so Napoleon, misled by his vanity 
and personal ambition, thought France must need 
an emperor. Here was an egregious folly, only 
to be pardoned for the severity of the penalty 
which it evoked. France, in making a republic in 
Europe, had fulfilled her needs. Her new sys- 
tem was not worn out: indeed, was only in its 
infancy, as it is even yet. That new experiment 
has since been interrupted by foreign accidents — a 
few generations in the history of a nation being 
comparatively as brief as the fainting fit of a 
moment in the life of a young child. In throwing 
off the Bourbon and Orleans dynasties, and accept- 
ing Louis ISTapoleon as emperor by the voice of 
universal suffrage, France well knows that she is 
returning fast towards her intermitted experiment 
of a democratic republic. It is her destiny, she 
feels, to live under the new form of government 
that she was the first to create in Europe — the 
present emperorship of Louis Napoleon being no 
more than a mask or curtain behind which the 
forces of her Nationhood are preparing for a 



LOUIS napoleon's "life of c^sak." 143 

return to the completion of their interrupted 
dream. 

Nations never go backward on their tracks : nor 
can dissimilar causes in their history, any more 
than in the history of individual lives, produce 
similar results. Charlemagne tried to revive the 
Boman imperial system in his own person, con- 
quering all Europe west of the Danube and call- 
ing it the "Empire of the West" — the Roman 
Power having then removed its capital to Constanti- 
nople, and being well content with recognition as 
the " Empire of the East." That Western Europe 
needed a change of government Charlemagne 
clearly saw, and as a military conqueror he was 
accepted in the iconoclastic spirit. His revival of 
an empire was successful for his own stormy and 
troubled lifetime ; but the moment that powerful 
repressive influence had been removed, the nations 
saw a new thing — the feudal system — rise up in 
Europe ; that very feudal system which has since 
been swept away in blood and fire by the first 
throes of the French revolution. Like Caesar 
thinking of returning to the ancient Roman king- 
ship ; like Charlemagne hoping to reconsolidate 
in his own dynasty the early Roman empire ; like 
the First Napoleon, forgetting that his purple was 
but tolerated as a portion of his military uniform, 
and that his true character was that of the armed 
hand of a democratic republic — we now see Louis 



144 



Napoleon dreaming of a I'rench empire which is 
to endure and be perpetuated in his family, and 
painfully writing books to prove that in himself 
is revived the Augustan era which only came to 
Eome after nearly four hundred years of an aristo- 
cratic republic. 

If the present Emperor of the French be alive 
half-a-dozen years from now, he will be quite 
likely to appreciate the philosophic truth of this 
article — a philosophy not spider-spun from dreams, 
and discolored by personal aspirations, as is his 
own ; but drawn with disinterested candor from an 
application of mere common-sense principles to 
the great teachings of historical experience. In 
the beheading of Louis Capet, France signified 
her conviction that a republican form of govern- 
ment was essential to her progress. That wish, in 
any orderly sense, has never yet been gratified, 
Europe conspiring to forbid the experiment, and 
France having for a brief time to accept an "impe- 
rator," or absolute commander-in-chief, as her only 
safeguard. The wish for the republic, however, 
has not died out, nor can France forego the idea 
until the idea shall — in the course of centuries, 
perhaps — have fulfilled its mission. Louis Napo- 
leon may translate books and write commentaries 
to prove himself a new Augustus, and to convince 
the French people that under his dynasty alone 
can their happiness be thoroughly developed. The 



LOUIS napoleon's "life of c^sae." 145 

whole thing is nonsense, however — the nonsense 
of a selfish and not large-minded dreamer, who 
has so much at stake in the game that he does not 
dare acknowledge, even to himself, how hopelessly 
and inevitably all the chances are against him. 
"Whoever is alive ten years from now will see 
France peacefally and proudly pursuing the republi- 
can experiment from which she was compelled to 
desist more than half a century ago, by the arms 
of the Holy Alliance. Louis Napoleon, mean- 
while, may fancy himself a new Augustus ; and 
we have no doubt that, in this light, his forthcom- 
ing volume may prove extremely instructive and 
amusing. 

Though not strictly in consonance with the gene- 
ral tenor of this article, we here subjoin a view of 
Napoleon III. from the easel of that most per- 
fect and wonderful of the world's song-writers — 
Beranger — whose verses yet possess an interest and 
power in France that not even the Emperor can 
ignore. The lines here paraphrased, we may add, 
were written by Beranger at a time when Napo- 
leon III. was attempting to excite the enthusiasm 
of the students and young revolutionary classes of 
Paris by representing that his reign furnished '' a 
revival of the days of the First Empire, in which 
the armed soldier of Democracy led forth his 
legions in behalf of the Democratic idea, and to 
the downfall of all regal tyrannies." 
7 



146 LOUIS napoleon's 



BERANGER TO THE STUDENTS. 

Poor youths I and think you that the gag 

Hath been removed from Freedom's Ups, 
Or that the old tri-colored flag 

Is now revived from its ecUpse ? 
My rhymes, I fear, are much to blame, 

Forget them — I their sense discard ; 
If this they taught, I curse my fame — 

Forgive a poor old witless bard ! 

What times are these they now "revive," 

"Were such the days I once did sing — 
I, who have never ceased to strive 

With flatterer, pander, priest and king ? 
A mighty chief once claimed my songs, 

But 'twas unsceptred, under guard. 
When Ste. Helene avenged our wrongs — 

Ah, pity an old witless bard I 

Can hireling eloquence please our ears, 

Leverrier fill Arago's place? 
Or, in despite the despot's fears. 

What spell can Hugo's love efface ? 
And can my king, all kind and good, 

Require "the spy's, the jailor's guard? 
And is't for him Rome reeks with blood — 

Pity a poor old witless bard I 

Aye, I have sometimes sung the sword. 
The azure robes that victory brings — 

But 'twas when Freedom's first-born poured 
Their blood to break the league of kings ! 



LOUIS napoleon's "life of c^sae." 147 

But he — this cut-throat, bandit, spy, 

Whose sword God's shrine could not retard, 

With him hob-nobbing, what were I ? 
Forgive a poor old witless bard ! 

To Poland's — to Itaha's cause 

France owes a debt that blood must clear ; 
The cannon roars — let's on — but pause ? 

The ground is dangerous if so near. 
Go carry freedom further yet ; 

The Turk — should we his prayer discard ? 
Behold the League of Kings is met — 

Forgive a poor old witless bard I 



PARNASSUS REVISITED. 

MOKE ABOUT PIRATICAL PRIVATEERING. 

"Whenever the history of Literary Larceny 
comes to be fully written, blackest upon the infa- 
mous record will stand the name of Miles 
O'Reilly, the soi-disant "Soldier-Poet." In the 
first number of Mrs. Grundy^ we held up before 
our readers a Magic Mirror of Scorn, in which we 
showed them clearly the form of this Literary 
Profligate, engaged in the congenial task of bur- 
rowing into the grave of the late Claudius 
Claudianus, the last of the Latin Classic Poets, 
and the jproiege, of the Empress Serena. Subse- 
quently, a lame attempt was made by him in the 
columns of The Citizen — a journal over which he 
appears to exercise but too much control — to 
throw discredit upon the statements made by us 
with regard to that flagitious transaction. He 
pretends to reject the idea of there being in exist- 
ence any such edition of Claudius Claudianus 
as the one to which we referred, viz. : the " Am- 
sterdam edition by Burmann, 1760." To this we 
reply, that immediately upon the publication of 
his "defence," we invited Mr. O'Reilly to visit 
us at our private residence, where the vellum- 



PARNASSUS REVISITED. 149 

bound treasure in question reposed majestically 
upon our desk, ready for his inspection. To tliat 
invitation we have never received any response. 
The Literary Profligate, dazzled by the Calcium 
Light suddenly brought to bear upon his doings, 
retired for a while into the obscurity so necessary, 
at times, to the Owls and Bats by which the Ke- 
public of Letters has ever been infested. 

But with characteristic audacity, the piratical 
Private O'Eeilly again emerges from his cavern. 
Friedrich Gerstaecker is this time the victim of 
our Literary Profligate, whose " original poem," 
" The Waste of War," is a literal, though rather 
meagre, translation from the German poet. We 
give both poems in full, in order that our readers 
may judge for themselves : 

THE WASTE OF WAR. 

[Translated from the GeiTaan of Friedrich Gerstaecker, by 
Miles Au-Relius, and audaciously palmed off by him as 
an Original Poem.] 

Three years ago, to-day, 

We raised our hands to Heaven, 
And, on the rolls of muster, 

Our names were thirty-seven ; 
There were just a thousand bayonets, 

And th« swords were thirty-seven, 
As w^e took the oath of service 

With our right hands raised to Heaven. 



150 PAKNUSSUS REVISITED. 

0, 't\\'as a gallant day, 

In memory still adored, 
That day of our sun-bright nuptials 

With the musket and the sword I 
Shrill rang the fifes, the bugles blared, 

And beneath a cloudless heaven 
Far flashed a thousand bayonets, 

And the swords were thirty-seven 



Of the thousand stalwart bayonets 

Two hundred march to-day ; 
Hundreds lie in "Virginia swamps, 

And hundreds in Maryland clay ; 
While other hundreds — less happy — drag 

Their mangled limbs around, 
And envy the deep, calm, blessed sleep 

Of the battle-field's holy ground. 



For the swords — one night a week ago 

The remnant, just eleven, — 
Gathered around a banquet! ng-board 

With seats for thirty-seven. 
There were two came in on crutches, 

And two had each but a hand, 
To pour the wine and raise the cup 

As we toasted "Our Flag and Land!" 



And the room seemed filled with whispers 
As we looked at the vacant seats. 

And with choking throats we pushed aside 
The rich but untasted meats : 



PARNASSUS REVISITED. 15 i 

Then in silence we brimmed our glasses 

As we stood up — just eleven — 
And bowed as we drank to the Loved and the Dead • 

"Who had made us Thirty-seven ! 

JDrei Sa^re jtnb e§ l^eut' gerab', 
2)a fanten gufammen toix 
3n biefem <Baak, im 'oolkn Staat 
©leBenunbbrei^ig Difijier' ; 

Unb taujenb 9}?ann, eine \t)ac!\e ^^aav, 
iDie fuf)rten wir jum Straujj. 
Slu0 biejem 'Baak, '5 nun brei 3a^r, 
S)a nidten tt»ir fro{)Urf) au§. 

D iwetd) ein grower Xa^ tvar ber, 
S)er unl bem (Bc^tvett getraut, 
SBie funfelte fo i)d[ unb {)e^r 
3!)ie fcf)arfgefc^ltffne S3raut ! 

3Bte funfeltctt un§ ju (Stolj unb I'ujl 
3n ber ^onne @Ianj unb Straljl 
2)ie taufcnb iltingen »on (Sifcn juft 
Unb bic fiebenunbbrei^ig i^on (£tal)l ! 

S3on ben taufenb SBajonnetcn nun 
3wei()unbert f)altcn ncc^ Stanb, 
JDenn ^unberte in ben Siimpfcn rubn, 
Unb '^unbert' in 3}?ar^lanb, 

Unb anbete <§unbert — treu unb Brat), 
2)ie frf)leppen — ycrfruppclt unb tiumb, 
5)urd)'g Seben fic^ noct), unb neiben ben ^c{)(af 
2)er ^obtcn im bluttgen ©runb. 



152 PARNASSUS REVISITED. 



Unb tie ^lingcn ? <§eut 9t6enb im ndmtid^en Saai 

©a fam an§ bem (£cf)larf)tgctt)uC)t 

!Dcr Stcfi jufvimmcn — nod) elf an ber ^ai)[, 

%i\x fiebcnunbbrciptg <Btu^V. 

3wet ^initcn an ^rucfen nur furba^, 
3»et I)atten je eine «§anb, 
Stber l)od) cr^ob bie cine ba§ ®la§ 
3um iJoafi: /,Un[er 53anner unb 2anb !" 

Unb mtt ^^rdncn fiiUte ft^ jeber Sbiid, 
3u «icl Stiif^le jlanben \a leer — 
2)ic teller fd}Dben fic 5U(c jurucf, 
S^ur ble (SJldfcr tangtcn fte f)cr, 

Unb frf)n?cigcnb fd)cnften fie toiebcr cin 
Unb fioben ben J'ranf juni 33?unb ; 
2)en ^obtcn brad)tcn fic jltll ben 2Qetn, 
$Dcn Sc^ldfern im blutigen @runb. 

And here a curious complication of literary 
crime presents itself. Turning over tlie leaves of 
our favorite Claudius, we stumble upon the fol- 
lowing trumpet-tongued poem, which occurs in 
the De Bella Gettico — still referring, of course, to 
the Burmann edition of 1760 — and from which 
Gerstaecker's production has audaciously been 
filched : — 

DEVASTATIO BELLI. 

Circum ter orbis volvitur annuus, 
Postquam supinas sustulimus manus 

Septem et triginta, cuspidesque 

Mille acie micuere acuta. 



PARNASSUS REVISITED. 153 

Dies dierum, nobilis, inclytus ! 
Dies fideli pectore conditus ! 

Dies coruscus nuptiarum, 

Cuspide cum gladio revincta ! 



Cantus tubarum, flamina tibiae 
Sub axe puro stridula personant; 
Clare nitescunt mille tela, 
Lucida ferra micant reclusa. 



Ex mille duris cuspidibus fere 
Eestant ducenti, Yirginise tenent 
Multos paludes (heul nefandum), 
Terra tenet Mariana multos. 

Multi trahentes, sorte miserrlmi ! 
Confecta diro vulnere- corpora, 

Campo cruento somniantes 

Invidia socios tuentur. 

Sol lumen orbi Septimus attulit, 
Ex quo dolentes reliquiae ensium, 
Undeni, ad integrum torale 
Conveniunt, dapibus paratis. 

Fulti baciUls sunt miseri duo, 
Manus duobus singula, qua tulit 
Cratera, quum vexillo amato, 
Et patriae cyathos dabamus. 

Plena et susurris interior domus 
Sedes relictas visa tuentibus, 
Nee passus angor mentis ore 
Sumere delicias saporum. 



154 PARNASSUS REVISITED. 

Vinum coronant, surgimus undecim; 
Stat qui-sque flcno vertice, tristius 
Propinat amissis, amatis, 
Nee lacrymse caruere amarae. 

The Germans are a people noted for their classi- 
cal research, nor is Herr Gerstaecker an exception 
to the rule. If great wits jump with simultaneous 
instinct, so also of eminent Literary Profligates; 
and it is well for Miles O'Reilly that his name 
should appear on the docket of Literary Piracies, 
in juxtaposition with that of Friedrich Gerstaecker. 



RESIGNED. 

Never again on the shoulder 
To see our knightly bars ; 
Never again on the shoulder 
To see our lordly leaves ; 
Never again to foUow 

The flag of the Stripes and Stars ; 
Never again to dream the dream 
That martial music weaves. 

Never again to call Comrade 

To the men who were comrades for years ; 
Never to hear the bugles, 

Thrilling and sweet and solemn ; 
Never again call Brother, 

To the men we think of with tears ; 
Never again to ride or march 
In the dust of the marching column. 



PARNASSUS REVISITED. 155 

Never again be a sharer 

In the first chilly hours of the strife, 
When, at dawn, the skirmish-rifles 
In opening chorus rattle ; 
Never again feel our manhood 
Kindle up into ruddy Hfe, 

'Midst the hell of scenes and noises 
In the hot hours of the battle. 

Crippled, forlorn, and useless — 
The glory of hfe grown dim ; 
Brooding alone o'er the memory 
Of the men who fell at my side ; 
Nursing a painftd fancy. 

And nursing a shattered hmb — 
Oh, comrades ! resigning is bitter : 

'Twere better with them to have died. 



KEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GKANT. 

TRUE HISTORY OF A TEMPERANCE DELEGATION — 
THE TIPSIEST TOTAL ABSTINENCE PARTY EVER 
KNOWN. 

St. Louis, Mo., August 19, 1864. 
THE SECESH THINK IF GRANT REMAINS IN POWER 
THEY ARE GONE. 

My Dear Hudson : I have to announce a great 
moral revolution ! John Secesh in these parts has 
turned temperance doctrinaire. He is for total 
abstinence. He is for cashiering any and every 
officer who can be proved to have imbibed more 
than seven thimblefuls of lager in any seven con- 
secutive days ! All the ladies who wear cherry 
and white ribbons in their bonnets are enthusiastic 
in the cause of anti-alcoholic imbibations. They 
are full of sincerest sorrow for the " unhappy 
tendency " of General Grant. They are eager 
that he may be at once relieved from command 
and sent to recuperate in some cold-water asylum. 
" It is the only way he can be saved," they say ; 
and " the only way in which the falling fortunes 
of the rebellion can be saved," is at the bottom of 
their thoughts. 



NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 157 

In a word, the John Seceshes of St. Louis have 
been busy for the last month in mysteriously but 
actively circulating rumors to the effect that the 
Lieutenant-General, on whose genius the fortunes 
of the Union are staked, has not been sober for a 
month, but that he continually dwelleth in the 
headquarters of "Beast Butler," who feedeth said 
Lieutenant-General upon fotty-rod whiskey and 
aquafortis brandy — the " Beast" aforesaid hoping 
to inherit the three stars whenever Grant shall 
have " cashed in his checks " under the life-com- 
pelling sceptre of Kine Alcohol ! 



GEORGE N. SANDERS AND SENATOR CHANDLER AS 
TEMPERANCE DELEGATES. 

So great is the agitation of John and Jeannette 
Secesh upon this point that they are preparing to 
repeat the experiment of a temperance delega- 
tion to wait upon the President, with a protest 
against his retention of " a common drunkard " in 
command of the chief army of the Union. It is 
said that Mr. George Noodle Sanders, at present 
of Canada, has been offered the chairmanship of 
this new temperance movement ; and that Senator 
Chandler, of Michigan, will represent, as secretary, 
the extreme abolition total-abstinence sentiment of 
the entire country. A special train is to be hired 
for the use of the delegation, so that decent travel- 



158 NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GEANT. 

lers from St. Louis to tne East may not be worried 
by tlie ultra-zealous temperance demonstrations 
of the members of the committee ; and in the instruc- 
tions of the " Total Abstinence Convention " under 
which the delegates are to act, it is resolved that 
" no member of the secesh temperance delegation 
to the President, for the removal of General Grant, 
shall carry with him during his journey from St. 
Louis to Washington, over six two-gallon demi- 
johns of Bourbon for his private use." 



FIRST 

GENERAL GRANT. 

The fuss that is now being made here by the 
rebel sympathizers over the alleged backslidings 
of the Lieutenant-General, recalls to my mind very 
forcibly a scene of which I was witness, just pre- 
vious to the capture of Fort Donelson. The actors 
in the matter were different ; but the anecdote 
falls in as a capital illustration of the present hub- 
bub. The thing is also memorable in itself, as 
embracing the only public joke of which Major- 
General Henry Wager Halleck has ever been 
known to be guilty. 

While Grant was elaborating his preparations 
to pass down the Mississippi with that magnificent 
and resistless energy which finally tore open the 
rebel lockjaw of the river at Fort Donelson, 



NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 159 

Columbus, Nashville, Pittsburg Landing,^ Yicks- 
burg, and finally Port Hudson, the John Seceshes 
of those early days became alarmed at his delibe- 
rate and unceasing energy, and at once commenced 
reviving, with exaggerations, unspeakable old 
stories and old lies in reference to certain alleged 
indiscretions of his early habits. The lies " took " 
with the rapidity which is usual in such cases ; 
and before a fortnight from their coinage in the 
rebel mint, we had a grave and dolorous editorial 
from the temperance and bran-bread philosophers 
of the Kew York Tribune^ pointing out 'Brigadier- 
General Grant as a melancholy example of the 
debasing and ruinous effects of too much alcohol. 
The New York Tribune philosophers, in fact, made 
him very much like the drunken helot, who was 
exhibited by Spartan fathers to their children 
as the best argument in favor of a Neal Dow 
Maine Law. 



GOVERNOR DICK YATES AND HIS ALLIES. 

Well, the matter at length went so far that Gov. 
Dick Yates, of Illinois — himself a notorious tem- 
perance advocate — gave his sanction to the getting 
up of a " temperance delegation" from the State, 
charged with proceeding to Washington, where 
they should lay before the President an energetic 
protest against his allowing " forty-two thousand 



160 NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 

sons of Illinois, then in the Army of the Missis- 
sippi, to have their lives placed in jeopardy under 
command of a common drunkard." This delega- 
tion was headed by Judge Davis, now of the 
Supreme Court, and had among its members such 
political friends of the President as Leonard Swett, 
Minister Judd, and other celebrated politicians of 
the Sucker State. 

PRESIDENT LINCOLN ON THE RAMPAGE. 

Mr. Lincoln did not know what to do with the 
matter. He had read the New York Trihune^s 
article, and was now besieged by the first tem- 
perance delegation in regard to " General Grant's 
habits." He telegraphed in cypher to General 
Halleck, who was then in command of the Missis- 
sippi department, setting forth what the Tribune 
said, what the total abstinence committee said, 
and what he (President Lincoln) thought should 
at once be done. This was nothing more nor less, 
than that General Halleck should issue an order 
summarily and disgracefully dismissing Grant from 
the service for being afflicted with alcoholic habits. 

GENERAL HALLECK CANT SEE IT, AND GROWS 
INDIGNANT. 

Halleck at once telegraphed back an indignant 
reply. If the charge were true, or had a shadow 



NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 161 

of truth in it, the first head to fall should not be 
Gren. Grant's — it should be General Halleck's. 
If he, commanding in chief the department, could 
expose his greatest army to defeat under such a 
person as the President seemed to believe General 
Grant, it was very clear that his Excellency should 
at once remove him (General Halleck) from the 
position he so manifestly was unqualified to fill. 
In conclusion, the Major-General commanding the 
Mississippi department would respectfully submit 
to his Excellency, that temperance delegations 
were very excellent things in their proper place — 
the editorial rooms of the New York Tribune and 
other synagogues of the saints, wherein the " total 
abstinence beverages" (not ''spirits") of "just 
men were made perfect ;" but that, so far as the 
Army of the Mississippi went, he wished to have 
nothing to say to them, and would prefer " Grant's 
little finger, even if tipsy, to the carcases of the 
whole blessed caboodle ! " 



INTENSE DISGUST AT WASHINGTON — THE TEM- 
PERANCE MEN VOTED A NUISANCE. 

Intense disgust followed the receipt at "Wash- 
ington of this telegram. The temperance dele- 
gation from Illinois took " tall drinks all round" 
many times, and then acceded to the President's 
proposition (Mr. Lincoln being anxious to get rid 



162 NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 

of tliem, as they were personal friends and a 
heavy drain upon his whiskey -cellar) ; and the 
proposition was this : They were to proceed in a 
body to St. Louis, Governor Dick Yates footing 
their travelling expenses and bar-room bills ; and 
on their arrival there, such of them as were able 
to walk should walk, and such of them as could 
not walk should be carried in carriages or wheel- 
barrows to Greneral Halleck's headquarters, where 
they should lay before said General their proofs 
and affidavits (mainly signed by members of 
the Christian and Sanitary Commissions, together 
with a raft of secessionists and cotton speculators) 
as to General Grant's "deplorable excesses" in the 
tippling line. 



THE 

WHEELBARROWS BEFORE GEN. HALLECK. 

"Well, to make a long story short, down they 
came, and were helped or carried by a strong 
delegation of porters, waiters, and all available 
black help, up the stoop of the Planters' House, 
and thence to their respective rooms, which were 
secured by Captain (now Colonel) J. Wilson 
Shaffer, of Illinois — then a quartermaster, and a 
very excellent one, on the staff of General Hunter. 
Had Shaffer not been there, the whole " tempe- 
rance delegation" would, beyond doubt, have been 



NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 163 

kicked into the street or sent for lodgings to the 
calaboose, as Palmer, the clerk, refused to give 
them entertainment unless they would duly regis- 
ter their names in the hotel book ; and there was 
not a man in the crowd who could see less than a 
dozen pens and a small army of books when the 
clerk offered him a single quill and pointed to the 
solitary ledger. 

THE TAR A-BOILING AND THE FEATHERS BEING 
COLLECTED. 

Of course for that night there could be no for- 
mal visit to General Halleck, who was then stay- 
ing in the hotel, accompanied by General Cullum, 
his Chief of Staff; Col. Kelton, his Assistant 
Adjutant-General; Col. Thorn, his Chief of Topo- 
graphical Engineers ; the lamented McPherson ; 
Col. Cutts, brother to Mrs. Douglas, and a young 
Major O'Reilly of the Adjutant-General's Depart- 
ment, whose first name I happen to forget. Cap- 
tain Shaffer, however, gleaned enough from the 
tipsy hiccoughings and grunts of his old friends 
from Illinois to form a right estimate of their 
general business. Great was the fun at Halleck^s 
table and in his adjacent headquarters that night ; 
but when the matter came to be somewhat noised 
abroad, it was found necessary to place a guard of 
soldiers at the door of each slumbrous member of 



164 NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 

the *' Temperance Delegation," in order to prevent 
the officers and men of Grant's army who chanced 
to be in town from supplying said members with 
a coat of tar and feathers as an appropriate uni- 
form in which their next morning's visit to Gene- 
ral Halleck should be paid. 

GRANT " MOVES ON THE ENEMY's WORKS" — FORT 
DONELSON CAPTURED. 

Next morning — Sunday morning — proved an 
eventful one. Long before the "total abstinence" 
representatives had commenced, with dizzy heads 
and trembling hands, to ring for Congress water 
and cocktails, great news had reached the busy 
headquarters of the general commanding. Fort 
Donelson had fallen before the unmatched prowess 
and resistless energy of General Grant. He had 
" moved upon the enemy's works," and they were 
his ! He had fifteen thousand prisoners, the whole 
armament of the fort, which covered many acres, 
and FJoyd was a miserable fugitive ! This victory 
necessitated the evacuation by the enemy of Bowl- 
ing Green and Columbus. It threw open the 
Mississippi to Pittsburg Landing, and was a veri- 
fication in full of those fears of the secessionists 
within our lines, which had first prompted them to 
start the lie that " Grant was a common drunkard, 
and should be at once removed." 



NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 165 



QUENCES. 

It was not until about ten in the morning that 
General Halleck had sufficient leisure from the 
more important and pressing cares of that critical 
moment to think of putting up on the bulletin 
board of the Planters' House the announcement 
of our victory. The bulletin was then written 
and handed to an orderly sergeant to be placed 
before the public. 

By this time the John Seceshes of St. Louis 
were in full force in the office and main corridor 
of the hotel. They were anxious, for they had 
heard whispers of bad news to their cause ; and 
they were also anxious as to the state of their 
friends of the " Temperance Delegation from Illi- 
nois." In truth, these gentlemen of the " total 
abstinence party" needed care and cocktails, baths 
and brandy -smashes, much barberizing and many 
juleps, before they could be revived into any 
appearance of respectability. The John Seceshes, 
however, were assiduous; and by the time the 
orderly sergeant, followed by General Halleck 
and staff, appeared in the corridor, the " members 
of the temperance delegation" had straightened 
themselves up into that condition of " unearthly 
sobriety" which your old toper (who has a pew in 
church and mamageable daughters) is always cer- 



166 NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 

tain to assume when recovering from a last night's 
debauch, and with just enough "red eye" in his 
stomach to make breakfast a ^possibility. 

GEN. HALLECK's SPEECH AND JOKE — THE ONLY 
JOKE OF HIS LIFE. 

On the posting up of the bulletin great was the 
hubbub and curious the varying sensations obser- 
vable on the faces of the crowd. John Secesh was 
in despair ; the " temperance delegation" looked 
as if no hole could be too small for the fattest man 
among them to crawl out through ; the loyalists, 
in and out of uniform, rent the air with cheers ; 
Halleck puffed his cigar with vigor, and General 
Cullum, just back from Cairo, rubbed his thin 
hands exultingly. 

" Palmer," called out General Halleck to the 
clerk, " send up two dozen baskets of champagne, 
and open them here for the benefit of the crowd." 
(Loud cheers, the temperance delegation look- 
ing sheepish.) " And, Palmer," continued the 
General, " I want you to give public notice that I 
shall suspect the loyalty of any maJe resident of 
St. Louis who can be found sober enough to walk 
or speak within the next half hour." 



NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 167 

THE "total abstinence^' MEN GET A BRIGHT 

IDEA. 

How the "total abstinence men" felt at this 
precise juncture I cannot say ; but history gives 
full record of what they did. A bright idea seized 
Judge Davis that by cheering and yelling the 
loudest for Greneral Grrant, the character of their 
mission might be forgotten. Davis yelled and 
cheered. Leonard Swett saw the point at once, 
and joined in chorus. Minister Judd only blamed 
himself that the same happy thought had not 
occurred to him before occurring to Judge Davis ; 
and, as the upshot of the whole, the entire " tem- 
perance party" became the most vociferous in the 
corridor in their mad huzzahs for the "Great 
Eiver Horse of the Mississippi." The cham])agne 
provided by General Halleck, however, was too 
cold for their inflamed and furious stomachs. 
They secured, through Shaffer's aid, a large empty 
hall, sometimes used as a ballroom, in the back 
part of the Planters' House ; and there, through- 
out that day, with many a pailful of " red eye" 
and many a bucket of spiced brandy, they held 
high revel, dancing like enthusiastic monomaniacs 
around the room and huzzahing for General Grant 
at the top of their voices — " Wilse Shaffer" mean- 
while having turned the key on the whole party, 
so that none but friends should see their folly. 



168 NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 

Thus ended the first " John Secesh temperance 
delegation" against General Grant. Are we now 
to have another, under the auspices of George 
N. Sanders and company? I have great hopes 
that, as a corollary of the new John Secesh tem- 
perance-movement against the greatest of our 
soldiers, we shall soon hear of General Grant 
quietly smoking his cigar in the mansion hereto- 
fore occupied by Mr. Jefferson Davis. It is only 
when the rebels are utterly hopeless and helpless, 
that they have resort to this miserable trick of 
personal assault and slander. 

In this connexion, and as one of the j oiliest 
camp drinking-songs that we can at this moment 
recall, perhaps Private O'Reilly's verses on 
" Winter Quarters," which are known to be favor- 
ites with Grant's staff, if not with the good and 
gallant General himself, may here be excused for 
their intrusion. It may be supposed they were 
written in that period of wintry repose when the 
vast camps of the Army of the Potomac were 
visited by swarms of ladies, and rang with the 
" sounds of revelry by night." 

WINTER QUARTERS. 

Comrades, 'tis a stormy winter, 

And the snow-drift rises higher ; 
Quick, and fling a larger splinter 
On the fire ! 



NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 169 

Let the loud winds moaning o'er us, 

O'er the warm and shingled thatch, 
Hear our bacchanalian chorus. 
Glee and catch 1 



Comrades ! List the wintry battle, 

See the white and hideous gloom — 
How the doors and windows rattle 

In the room I 
Draw the curtains, cards and drinking, 

Woman's hp and wit refined, 
These may save the sin of thinking 
Heaven unkind. 



Comrades, till the dreary morning 

Shine above the waste of snow. 

Let delight, at prudence scorning, 

Kule below I 
Fill the flagon — each a brimmer. 

Ruby, fragrant, warm and strong- 
Blood is cold, but it will simmer 
Before long. 



Comrades, fill a deeper flagon, 

See the golden apples gleam — 
Fruit of joy ! Oh, slay the dragon 

Guarding them 1 
Life's an auction ; please the palate. 

Purchase every costly toy. 
And 'till death lets fall his mallet, 
Bid for joy ! 



170 NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT. 

Comrades, hear the hollow moaning 

Of the tempest o'er the wold ; 
Earth is white with fright and groaning 

In the cold ; 
Some there be, perchance, who wander 

Shivering,. houseless, loveless, lone; 
These are thoughts to make us fonder 
Of our own ! 

Clinking glasses — what surpasses 

The rich melody ye chime ! 
How ye brighten, cheer and lighten 

Winter time I 
Woman's lip is ripe and melting 

Sweeter far than bloom of rose, 
For, when storms around are pelting, 
See — it glows ! 

Woman fairest — Lydia dearest ! 

Love you not the whirling storm? 
Let it mutter, while we utter 

Whispers w^arm : 
Nestle closer ! Let thy tresses 

Bathe and shade my panting heart — 
Winter, bringing such caresses. 
Ne'er depart 1 

IViends, brim up a richer beaker 

Than ye e'er have quaffed before, 
For the storm strikes, bleak and bleaker, 

On the door ; 
Till the lightning cleave the shingle, 

And the snow-drift chill the bowl,. 
Sing, and drink, and kiss and mingle 
Soul with soul I 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF OUR FIRST BLACK REGI- 
MENT. — HOW IT WAS STARTED WITHOUT AU- 
THORITY OR ORDER. 

CHAPTER I. 

Black troops are now an established success, 
and hereafter — while the race can furnish enough 
able-bodied males — the probability would seem 
that one-half the permanent naval and military 
forces of the United States will be drawn from this 
material, under the guidance and control of white 
ofl&cers. To-day there is much competition among 
the field and staff officers of our white volunteers 
— more especially in those regiments about being 
disbanded — to obtain commissions of like or even 
lower grade in the colored regiments of Uncle 
Sam. General Casey's board of examination can- 
not keep in session long enough, nor dismiss in- 
competent aspirants quick enough, to keep down 
the vast throngs of veterans, with and without 
shoulder-straps, who are now seeking various 
grades of command in the colored brigades of the 
Union. 

Over this result all intelligent men will rejoice 



172 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

— the privilege of being either killed or wounded 
in battle, or stricken down by the disease, toils, 
and privations incident to the life of a marching 
soldier, not belonging to that class of prerogatives 
for the exclusive enjoyment of which men of 
sense, and with higher careers open to them, will 
long contend. 

Looking back, however, but a few years to the 
organization of the first regiment of black troops 
in the department of the South — what a change 
in public opinion are we compelled to recognise I 
In sober verity, War is not only the sternest, but 
the quickest, of all teachers ; and contrasting the 
Then and ISTow of our negro regiments, as we 
propose to do in this sketch, the contrast will for- 
cibly recall G-alileo's obdurate assertion that " the 
world still moves." 

Be it known, then, that the first regiment of 
black troops raised in our recent war, was raised 
in the spring of 1862 by the commanding general 
of the department of the South, of his own 
motion, and without any direct authority of law, 
order, or even sanction from the President, the 
Secretary of War, or our Houses of Congress. It 
was done by General Hunter as "a military 
necessity" under very peculiar circumstances, to 
be detailed hereafter; and, although repudiated 
at first by the Grovernment — as were so many 
other measures originated in the same quarter — 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 173 

it was finally adopted as the settled policy of tlie 
country and of our military system ; as have like- 
wise since been adopted all the other original 
measures for which this officer, at the time of 
their first announcement, was made to suffer both 
official rebuke and the violently vituperative 
denunciation of more than one-half the Northern 
press. 

In the spring of 1862, General Hunter, finding 
himself with less than eleven thousand men under 
his command, and charged with the duty of hold- 
ing the whole tortuous and broken sea-coast of 
Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, had applied 
often, and in vain, to the authorities at Washing- 
ton for reinforcements. All the troops that could 
be gathered in the Korth were less than sufficient 
for the continuous drain of General McClellan's 
great operations against the enemy's capital ; and 
the reiterated answer of the War Department 
was : " You must get along as best you can. Not 
a man from the Korth can be spared." 

On the mainland of the three States nominally 
forming the Department of the South, the flag of 
the Union had no permanent foothold, save at 
Fernandina, St. Augustine, and some few unim- 
portant points along the Florida coast. It was on 
the Sea-islands of Georgia and South Carolina 
that our troops were stationed, and continually 
engaged in fortifying — the enemy being every- 



174 RECOLLECTIONS OF TTTR WAR. 

where visible, and in force, across the narrow- 
creeks dividing us from the mainland; and 
mutual raids — they across to our islands, and we 
back to their mainland, and up their creeks, with 
a few gunboats to help us — being the order of the 
day : yea, and yet oftcner, of the night. 

No reinforcements to be had from the North ; 
vast fatigue duties in throwing up earthworks 
imposed on our insufficient garrisons ; the enemy 
continually increasing both in insolence and num- 
bers ; our only success the capture of Fort 
Pulaski, scaling up Savannah ; and this victory 
off-set, if not fully counterbalanced, by many 
minor gains of the enemy; — this was about the 
condition of affiiirs as seen from the headquai-ters 
fronting Port Royal bay, when General Hunter 
one fine morning, with twirling glasses, puckered 
lips, and dilated nostrils — (he had just received 
another " don't-bother-us-for-reinforcements" dis- 
patch from Washington) — announced his inten- 
tion of " forming negro regiments," and compel- 
ling " every able-bodied black man in the depart- 
ment to fight for the freedom which could not but 
be the issue of our war." 

This resolution being taken, was immediately 
acted upon with vigor, the General causing all the 
necessary orders to be issued, and taking upon 
himself, as his private burden, the responsibility 
for all the irregular issues of arms, clothing, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 175 

equipments, and rations involved in collecting and 
organizing the first experimental negro regiment. 
The men he intended to pay, at first, by placing 
them as laborers on the pay-rolls of the chief 
quartermaster ; but it was his hope that the 
obvious necessity and wisdom of the measure he 
had thus presumed to adopt without authority, 
would secure for it the immediate approval of the 
higher authorities, and the necessary orders to 
cover the required pay and supply-issues of the 
force he had in contemplation. If his course 
should be indorsed by the "War Department, well 
and good ; if it were not so indorsed, why he had 
enough property of his own to pay back to the 
Government all he was irregularly expending in 
this experiment. 

But BOW, on the very threshold of this novel 
enterprise, came the first — and it was not a trivial 
— difficulty. Where could experienced officers be 
found for such an organization ? " "What ! com- 
mand niggers!" was the reply — if possible more 
amazed than scornful — af nearly every competent 
young lieutenant or captain of volunteers to whom 
the suggestion of commanding this class of 
troops was made. " Never mind," said Hunter, 
when this trouble was brought to his notice ; " the 
fools or bigots who refuse are enough punished by 
their refusal. Before two years they will be com- 
peting eagerly for the commissions they now reject." 



176 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

Straightway there was issued a circular to all 
commanding officers in the department, directing 
them to announce to the non-commissioned officers 
and men of their respective commands that com- 
missions in the " South Carolina Eegiments of 
Colored Infantry," would be given to all deserv- 
ing and reputable sergeants, corporals, and men 
who would appear at department headquarters, 
and prove able to pass an examination in the 
manual and tactics before a Board of Examiners, 
which was organized in a general order of con- 
current date. Capt. Arthur M. Kinzie, of Chi- 
cago, aide-de-camp — now of Hancock's Veteran 
Eeserve Corps — was detailed as Colonel of the 
regiment, giving place, subsequently, in conse- 
quence of injured health, to the present Brig.- 
Gen. James D. Fessenden, then a captain in the 
Berdan Sharpshooters, though detailed as acting 
aide-de-camp on Gen. Hunter's staffi Captain 
Kinzie, we may add, was General Hunter's 
nephew, and his appointment as Colonel was made 
partly on the grounds of superior fitness ; and 
partly to prove — so violent was then the prejudice 
against negro troops — that the Commanding Gen- 
eral asked nothing of others which he was not 
willing that one of his own flesh and blood should 
be engaged in. 

The work was now fairly in progress, but the 
barriers of prejudice were not to be lightly over- 



■ RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 177 

tbrown. Non-commissioned officers and men of 
the right stamp, and able to pass the examination 
requisite, were scarce articles. Few had the hardi- 
hood or moral courage to face the screaming, riot- 
ous ridicule of their late associates in the white 
regiments. We remember one very striking 
instance in point, which we shall give as a sample 
of the whole. 

Our friend Mr. Charles F. Briggs, of this city, 
so well known in literary circles, had a nephew 
enlisted in that excellent regiment the 48th New 
York, then garrisoning Fort Pulaski and the 
works on Tybee Island. This youngster had 
raised himself by gallantry and good conduct to 
be a non-commissioned officer; and Mr. Briggs 
was anxious that he should be commissioned, 
according to his capacities, in the colored troops 
then being raised. The lad was sent for, passed 
his examination with credit, and was immediately 
offered a first-lieutenancy, with the promise of 
being made captain when his company should be 
filled up to the required standard — probably with- 
in ten days. The inchoate first-lieutenant was in 
ecstasies ; a gentleman by birth and education, he 
longed for the shoulder-straps. He appeared joy- 
ously grateful ; and only wanted leave to run up 
to Fort Pulaski for the purpose of collecting his 
traps, taking leave of his former comrades, and 
procuring his discharge-papers from Col. Barton. 



178 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

Two days after that came a note to department 
headquarters respectful Ij declining the commis- 
sion! He had been laughed and jeered out of 
accepting a captaincy by his comrades ; and this — 
though we remember it more accurately from our 
correspondence with Mr. Briggs — was but one of 
many score of precisely similar cases. 

At length, however, officers were found ; the 
ranks were filled ; the men learned with uncom- 
mon quickness, having the imitativeness of so 
many monkeys apparently, and such excellent 
ears for music that all evolutions seemed to come 
to them by nature. At once, despite all hostile 
influences, the negro regiment became one of the 
lions of the South ; and strangers visiting the 
department, crowded out eagerly to see its evening 
parades and Sunday-morning inspections. By a 
strange coincidence, its camp was pitched on the 
lawn and around the mansion of Greneral Dray- 
ton, who commanded the rebel works guarding 
Hilton Head, Port Royal, and Beaufort, when the 
same were first captured by the joint naval and 
military operations under Admiral Da Pont and 
General Timothy W. Sherman — General Dray- 
ton's brother, Captain Drayton of our navy, hav- 
ing command of one of the best vessels in the 
attacking squadron ; as he subsequently took part 
in the first iron-clad attack on Fort Sumter. 

Meantime, however, the "War Department gave 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 179 

no sign, and the oracles of tlie Adjutant- General's 
office were dumb as the statue of the Sphynx. 
Keports of the organization of the First South 
Carolina infantry were duly forwarded to army 
headquarters ; but evoked no comment, either of 
approval or rebuke. Letters detailing what had 
been done, and the reason for doing it; asking 
instructions, and to have commissions duly issued 
to the officers selected ; appeals that the depart- 
ment paymasters should be instructed to pay these 
negro troops like other soldiers ; demands that the 
government should either shoulder the responsi- 
bility of sustaining the organization, or give, such 
orders as would absolve Gen. Hunter from the 
responsibility of backing out from an experiment 
which he believed to be essential to the salvation 
of the country — all these appeals to Washington 
proved in vain ; for the oracles still remained pro- 
foundly silent, probably waiting to see how public 
opinion and the politicians would receive this dar- 
ing innovation. 

At length one evening a special dispatch- 
steamer ploughed her way over the bar, and a 
perspiring messenger delivered into General 
Hunter's hands a special despatch from the War 
Department, " requiring immediate answer." The 
General was just about mounting his horse for 
his usual evening ride along the picket-line, when 
this portentous missive was brought under his 



180 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

notice. Hastily opening it, lie first looked grave, 
then began to smile, and finally burst into peals 
of irrepressible laughter — such as were rarely 
heard from "Black David," his old army-name. 
Never was the General seen, before or since, in 
such good spirits ; he literally was unable to speak 
from constant interruptions of laughter ; and all 
his Adjutant-General could gather from him was : 
*' That he would not part with the document in his 
hand for fifty thousand dollars." 

At length he passed over the dispatch to his 
Chief of Staff, who, on reading it, and re-read- 
ing it, could find in its text but little apparent 
cause for merriment. It was a grave demand 
from the War Department for information in 
regard to our negro regiment — the demand being 
based on certain resolutions introduced by the 
Hon. Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, asking for 
specific information on the point in a tone clearly 
not friendly. These resolutions had been adopted 
by Congress ; and as Hunter was without author- 
ity for any of his actions in the case, it seemed 
to his then not cheerful Adjutant-General that the 
documents in his hands were the reverse of hilari? 
ous. 

Still Hunter was in extravagant spirits as he 
rode along, his laughter startling the squirrels in 
the dense pine-woods, and every attempt that he 
made to explain himself being again and again 



EECOLLEOTIONS OF THE WAR. 181 

interrupted by renewed peals of inextinguishable 
mirth. " The fool," he at length managed to say ; 
" that old fool has just given me the very chance 
I was growing sick for ! The War Department 
has refused to notice my black regiment ; but now, 
in reply to this resolution, I can lay the matter 
before the country, and force the authorities either 
to adopt my negroes or to disband them." 

He then rapidly sketched out the kind of reply 
he wished to have prepared ; and, with the first 
ten words of his explanation, the full force of the 
cause he had for laughter became apparent. Never 
did General and his Chief-of-staflF, in a more un- 
seemly state of cachin nation, ride along a picket- 
line. At every new phase of the subject it pre- 
sented new features of the ludicrous ; and though 
the reply, at this late date, may have lost much 
of the drollery which then it wore, it is a serio- 
comic document of as much vital importance in 
the moral history of our late contest as any that 
can be found in the archives under the care of 
General E. D. Townsend. It was received late 
Sunday evening, and was answered very late that 
night, in order to be in time for the steamer Arago^ 
which sailed at daylight next morning — the 
dispatch-steamer which brought the request for 
"immediate information" having sustained some 
injuries which prevented an immediate return. It 
was written after midnight, we may add, in a tor- 



182 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

nado of thunder and tempest such as has rarely 
been known even on that tornado-stricken coast; 
but loud as were the peals and vivid the flashes 
of heaven's artillery, there were at least two per- 
sons within the lines on Hilton Head who were 
laughing far too noisily themselves to pay any 
heed to external clamors. The reply thus con- 
cocted and sent, from an uncorrected manuscript 
copy now in our possession, ran as follows : 

" Headquarters, Department of the South, ) 
Hilton Head, S. C, June, 1862. f 

" To the Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War^ 
Washington, D. G. 

" Sir : — I have the honor to acknowledge the 
receipt of a communication from the Adjutant- 
General of the Army, dated June 13, 1862, re- 
questing me to furnish you with the information 
necessary to answer certain Resolutions introduced 
in the House of Representatives, Jane 9, 1862, on 
motion of the Hon. Mr. Wickliffe of Kentucky — 
their substance being to inquire : 

" 1st. Whether I had organized, or was organiz- 
ing, a regiment of ' fugitive slaves' in this Depart- 
ment. 

"2d. Whether any authority had been given 
to me from the War Department for such organi- 
zation: and 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAK. 183 

" 3d. Whether I had been furnished, by order 
of the War Department, with clothing, uniforms, 
arms, equipments, and so forth, for such a force ? 

" Only having received the letter at a late hour 
this evening, I urge forward my answer in time 
for the steamer sailing to-morrow morning — this 
haste preventing me from entering, as minutely as 
I could wish, upon many points of detail, such as 
the paramount importance of the subject would 
seem to call for. But, in view of the near termi- 
nation of the present session of Congress, and the 
wide-spread interest which must have been awak- 
ened by Mr. Wickliflfe's resolutions, I prefer send- 
ing even this imperfect answer, to waiting the 
period necessary for the collection of fuller and 
more comprehensive data. 

'' To the first question., therefore, I reply : that 
no regiment of 'fugitive slaves' has been, or is 
being, organized in this department. There is, 
however, a fine regiment of loyal persons whose 
late masters are ' fugitive rebels' — men who every- 
where fly before the appearance of the Kational 
Flag, leaving their loyal and unhappy servants 
behind them, to shift, as best they can, for them- 
selves. So far, indeed, are the loyal persons com- 
posing this regiment from seeking to evade the 
presence of their late owners, that they are now, 
one and all, endeavoring with commendable zeal 
to acquire the drill and discipline requisite to 



184 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

place them in a position to go in full and effective 
pursuit of their fugacious and traitorous proprie- 
tors. 

" To the second question, I have the honor to 
answer that the instructions given to Brig.-Gen. 
T. W. Sherman by the Hon. Simon Cameron, late 
Secretary of War, and turned over to me, by suc- 
cession, for my guidance, do distinctly authorize 
me to employ ' all loyal persons offering their ser- 
vices in defence of the Union, and for the suppres- 
sion of this rebellion,' in any manner I may see 
fit, or that circumstances may call for. There is 
no restriction as to the character or color of the 
persons to be employed, or the nature of the em- 
ployments — whether civil or military — in which 
their services may be used. I conclude, therefore, 
that I have been authorized to enlist 'fugitive 
slaves' as soldiers, could any such ' fugitives' be 
found in this department. 

" ISTo such characters, however, have yet appear- 
ed within view of our most advanced pickets — the 
loyal negroes everywhere remaining on their 
plantations to welcome us, aid us, and supply us 
with food, labor, and information. It is the mas- 
ters who have in every instance been the ' fugi- 
tives,' running away from loyal slaves as well as 
loyal soldiers ; and these, as yet, we have only 
partially been able to see — chiefly their heads over 
ramparts, or dodging behind trees, rifle in hand, 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAE. 185 

in the extreme distance. In the absence of any 
* fugitive master law,' the deserted slaves would 
be wholly without remedy, had not the crime of 
treason given them the right to pursue, capture, 
and bring back those persons of whose benignant 
protection they have been thus suddenly and 
cruelly bereft. 

" To the third interrogatory, it is my painful 
duty to reply that I never have received any 
specific authority for issues of clothing, uniforms, 
arms, equipments, and so forth, to the troops in 
question — my general instructions from Mr. 
Cameron, to employ them in any manner I might 
find necessary, and the military exigencies of the 
department and the country, being my only, but, 
I trust, sufficient, justification. Neither have I 
had any specific authority for supplying these 
persons with shovels, spades, and pickaxes, when 
employing them as laborers ; nor with boats and 
oars, when using them as lighter-men ; but these 
are not points included in Mr. Wicklifie's resolu- 
tion. To me it seemed that liberty to employ 
men in any particular capacity implied and carried 
with it liberty, also, to supply them with the 
necessary tools; and, acting upon this faith, I 
have clothed, equipped, and armed the only loyal 
regiment yet raised in South Carolina, Georgia, or 
Florida. 

" I must say, in vindication of my own conduct, 



186 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

that, had it not been for the many other diversi- 
fied and imperative claims on my time and atten- 
tion, a much more satisfactory result might have 
been achieved ; and that, in place of only one 
regiment, as at present, at least five or six well- 
drilled, brave, and thoroughly acclimated regi- 
ments should, by this time, have been added to 
the loyal forces of the Union. 

" The experiment of arming the blacks, so far 
as I have made it, has been a complete and even 
marvellous success. They are sober, docile, atten- 
tive, and enthusiastic — displaying great natural 
capacities in acquiring the duties of the soldier. 
They are now eager beyond all things to take the 
field and be led into action ; and it is the unani- 
mous opinion of the officers who have had charge 
of them that, in the peculiarities of this climate and 
country, they will prove invaluable auxiliaries — 
fully equal to the similar regiments so long and 
successfully used by the British authorities in the 
West India Islands. 

"In conclusion, I would say, it is my hope — 
there appearing no possibility of other reinforce- 
ments, owing to the exigencies of the campaign in 
the Peninsula — to have organized by the end of 
next fall, and be able to present to the govern- 
ment, from forty-eight to fifty thousand of these 
hardy and devoted soldiers. 

" Trusting that this letter may be made part of 



RECOLLECTION'S OF THE WAR. 187 

jour answer to Mr. Wickliffe's resolutions, I have 
the honor to be, very respectfully, your most 
obedient servant, 

"David Hunter, 
"Major-Greneral Commanding." 

This missive was duly sent, with many misgiv- 
ings that it would not get through the routine of 
the War Department in time to be laid before 
Congress previous to . the adjournment of that 
honorable body, which was then imminent. There 
were fears, too, that the Secretary of War might 
think it not sufficiently respectful, or serious in 
its tone ; but such apprehensions proved unfound- 
ed. The moment it was received and read in the 
War Department, it was hurried down to the 
House, and delivered, ore rotundo^ from the Clerk's 
desk. 

Here its effect was magical. The Clerk could 
scarcely read it with decorum ; nor could half his 
words be heard amidst the universal peals of 
laughter in which both Democrats and Eepubli- 
cans appeared to vie as to which should be the more 
noisy. Mr. Wickliflfe, who only entered during 
the reading of the latter half of the document, 
rose to his feet in a frenzy of indignation, com- 
plaining that the reply, of which he had only 
heard some portion, was an insult to the dignity 
of the House, and should be severely noticed. 



188 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

The more tie raved and gesticulated, the more 
irrepressibly did his colleagues, on both sides of 
the slavery question, scream and laugh ; until, 
finally, the merriment reached its climax on a 
motion made by some member — Schuyler Colfax, 
if we remember rightly — that " as the document 
appeared to please the honorable gentleman from 
Kentucky so much, and as he had not heard the 
whole of it, the Clerk be now requested to read 
the whole again" — a motion which was instan- 
taneously carried amid such an uproar of univer- 
sal merriment and applause as the frescoed walls 
of the chamber have seldom heard, either before 
or since. It was the great joke of the day, and 
coming at a moment of universal gloom in the 
public mind, was seized upon by the whole loyal 
press of the country as a kind of politico-military 
champagne-cocktail. 

This set that question at rest for ever ; and not 
long after, the proper authorities saw fit to author- 
ize the employment of "fifty thousand able- 
bodied blacks for labor in the Quartermaster's 
Department," and the arming and drilling as sol- 
diers of five thousand of these — but for the sole 
purpose of " protecting the women and children 
of their fellow-laborers who might be absent from 
home in the public service." 

Here we have another instance of the reluctance 
with which the National Government took up this 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 189 

idea of employing negroes as soldiers — a resolu- 
tion, we may add, to which they were only finally 
compelled by General Hunter's disbandmeot of 
his original regiment, and the storm of public 
indignation which followed that act. 

OUTLAWRY OF HUNTER AND HIS OFFICERS BY 
THE REBEL GOVERNMENT — HUNTER'S SUP- 
PRESSED LETTER TO JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

CHAPTER n. 

Nothing could have been happier in its effect 
upon the public mind than General Hunter's reply 
to Mr. Wickliffe of Kentucky, given in our last. 
It produced a general broad grin throughout the 
country, and the advocate who can set his jury 
laughing rarely loses his cause. It also strength- 
ened the spinal column of the Government in a 
very marked degree ; although not yet up to the 
point of fully endorsing and accepting this dar- 
ing experiment. 

Meantime the civil authorities of course got 
wind of what was going on — Mr. Henry J. Wind- 
sor, special correspondent of the New York Times 
in the Department of the South, having devoted 
several very graphic and widely-copied letters to 
a picture of that new thing under the sun — 
*' Hunter's negro regiment." 

Of course the chivalry of the rebellion were 



190 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

incensed beyond measure at this last Yankee out- 
rage upon Southern rights. Their papers teemed 
with vindictive articles against the commanding 
general who had dared to initiate such a novelty 
— the Savannah RepuhlicaUj in particular, de- 
nouncing Hunter as " The cold-blooded abolition 
miscreant who, from his headquarters at Hilton 
Head, is engaged in executing the bloody and 
savage behests of the imperial gorilla who, from 
his throne of human bones at Washington, rules, 
reigns, and riots over the destinies of the brutish 
and degraded North." 

Mere newspaper abuse, however, by no means 
.gave content to the outraged feelings of the chi- 
valry. They therefore sent a formal demand to 
our Grovernment for information as to whether 
General Hunter, in organizing his regiment of 
emancipated slaves, had acted under the authority 
of our War Department ; or whether the villany 
was of his own conception ? If he had acted 
under orders, why then terrible measures of fierce 
retaliation against the whole Yankee nation were 
to be adopted; but if, ^^e?- contra^ the iniquity 
were of his own motion and without the sanctioD 
of our Grovernment, then the foreshadowed retri- 
bution should be made to fall only on Hunter and 
his ofl&cers. 

To this demand, with its alternative of threats. 
President Lincoln was in no mood to make any 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR 191 

definitive reply. In fact no reply at all was sent 
— for, as yet, the most far-seeing political augurs 
could not determine whether the bird seen in the 
sky of the Southern Department would prove an 
eagle or a buzzard. Public opinion was not 
formed upon the subject, though rapidly forming. 
There were millions who agreed with Hunter in 
believing that "the black man should be made 
fight for the freedom which could not but be the 
issue of our war;" and then there were other mil- 
lions whose conservative notions were outraged at 
the prospect of allowing black men to be killed 
or maimed in company with our nobler 
whites. 

Failing to obtain any reply, therefore, from the 
authorities of Washington, the Eichmond people 
determined to pour out all their vengeance on the 
immediate perpetrators of this last Yankee atro- 
city ; and forthwith there was issued from the 
rebel War Department a General Order — number 
60, we believe, of the Series of 1862 — reciting 
that " as the government of the United States had 
refused to answer whether it authorized the rais- 
ing of a black regiment by General Hunter or 
not," said General, his staff, and all of&cers under 
his command who had directly or indirectly par- 
ticipated in the unclean thing, should hereafter be 
maranatha — outlaws not covered by the laws 
of war; but to be executed as felons for the 



192 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

crime of " inciting negro insurrections wherever 
caught." 

This order reached the ears of the parties 
mainly interested just as General Hunter was 
called to Washington — ostensibly for consultation 
on public business ; but really on the motion of 
certain prominent speculators in marine transpor- 
tation, with whose " big things" in Port Eoyal 
harbor — and they were enormous — the General 
had seen fit to interfere. These frauds, however, 
will form a very fruitful and pregnant theme for 
some future chapters. At present our business is 
with the slow but certain growth in the public 
mind of this idea of allowing some black men to 
be killed in the late war, and not continuing to 
arrogate death and mutilation by projectiles and 
bayonets as an exclusive privilege for our own 
beloved white race. 

No sooner had Hunter been relieved from this 
special duty at Washington, than he was ordered 
back to the South — our Government still taking 
no notice of the order of outlawry against him 
issued by the rebel Secretary of War. He and 
his officers were thus sent back to engage, with 
extremely insufficient forces, in an enterprise of 
no common difficulty, and with an agreeable sen- 
tence of sics. per col, if captured, hanging over 
their devoted heads ! 

" Why not suggest to Mr. Stanton, General, that 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 193 

he should either demand the special revocation 
of that order, or announce to the rebel War De- 
partment that our Government has adopted yoar 
negro-regiment policy as its own — which would 
be the same thing?" 

It was partly on this hint that Hunter wrote 
the following letter to Jefferson Davis — a letter 
subsequently suppressed and never sent, owing to 
influences which the writer of this article does not 
feel himself as yet at liberty to reveal — further 
than to say that Mr. Stanton knew nothing of the 
matter. Davis and Hunter, we may add, had 
been very old and intimate friends, until divided, 
some years previous to our late war, by differences 
on the slavery question. Davis had for many 
years been adjutant of the 1st U. S. Dragoons, of 
which Hunter had been Captain Commanding ; 
and a relationship of very close friendship had 
existed between their respective families. It was 
this thorough knowledge of his man, perhaps, 
which gave peculiar bitterness to Hunter's pen ; 
and the letter is otherwise remarkable as a pro- 
phecy, or preordainment of that precise policy 
which President Johnson has so frequently an- 
nounced and reiterated since Mr. Lincoln's death. 
It ran — with some few omissions, no longer perti- 
nent or of public interest — as follows : 
9 



194 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

" To Jefferson Davis, Titular President of the 

so-called Confederate States. 

" Washington, 20tli Sept., 1862. 

" Sir : — While recently in command of the 
Department of the South, in accordance with 
the laws of war and the dictates of common sense, 
I organized and caused to be drilled, armed, and 
equipped a regiment of enfranchised bondmen, 
known as the 1st South Carolina Volunteers. 

" For this action, as I have ascertained, the pre- 
tended government of which you are the chief 
officer, has issued against me and all of my officers 
who were engaged in organizing the regiment in 
question, a General Order of Outlawry, which 
announces that, if captured, we shall not even be 
allowed the usual miserable treatment extended 
to such captives as fall into your hands ; but that 
we are to be regarded as felons, and to receive the 
death by hanging due to such, irrespective of the 
laws of war. 

*' Mr. Davis, we have been acquainted intimately 
in the past. We have campaigned together, and 
our social relations have been such as to make 
each understand the other thoroughly. That you 
mean, if it be ever in your power, to execute tho 
full rigor of your threat, I am well assured ; and 
you will believe my assertion, that I thank you 
for having raised in connection with me and my 
acts, this sharp and decisive issue. I shall proudly 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 195 

accept, if such be the chance of war, the martyr- 
dom you menace ; and hereby give you notice 
that unless your General Order against me and my 
officers be formally revoked within thirty days 
from the date of the transmission of this letter, 
sent under a flag of truce, I shall take your action 
in the matter as final ; and will reciprocate it by 
hanging every rebel officer who now is, or may 
hereafter be taken, prisoner by the troops of the 
command to which I am about returning. 

*' Believe me that I rejoice at the aspect now 
being given to the war by the course you have 
adopted. In my judgment, if the undoubted 
felony of treason had been treated from the out- 
set as it deserves to be — as the sum of all felonies 
and crimes — this rebellion would never have 
attained its present menacing proportions. The 
war you and your fellow-conspirators have been 
waging against the United States must be regarded 
either as a war of justifiable defence, carried on 
for the integrity of the boundaries of a sovereign 
Confederation of States against foreign aggression, 
or as the most wicked, enormous, and deliberately- 
planned conspiracy against human liberty and 
for the triumph of treason and slavery, of which 
the records of the world's history contain any 
note. 

" If our Government should adopt the first view 
of the case, you and your fellow-rebels may justly 



196 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

claim to be considered a most unjustly- treated 
body of disinterested patriots — although, perhaps, 
a little mistaken in your connivance with the 
thefts by which your agent, John B. Floyd, suc- 
ceeded in arming the South and partially dis- 
arming the North, as a preparative to the com 
mencement of the struggle. 

" But if on the other hand — as is the theory of 
our Government — the war you have levied against 
the United States be a rebellion the most cause- 
less, crafty, cruel, and bloody ever known — a 
conspiracy having the rule-or-ruin policy for its 
basis, the plunder of the black race and the re- 
opening of the African slave-trade for its object, 
the continued and further degradation of ninety 
per cent, of the white population of the South in 
favor of a slave-driving ten per cent, aristocracy, 
and the exclusion of all foreign-born immigrants 
from participation in the generous and equal hos- 
pitality foreshadowed to them in the Declaration 
of Independence, — if this, as I believe, be a fair 
statement of the origin and motives of the rebel 
lion of which you are the titular head, then it 
would have been better had our Government 
adhered to the constitutional view of treason from 
the start, and hung every man taken in arms 
against the United States, from the first butchery 
in the streets of Baltimore, down to the last rcsult- 
less battle fought in the vicinity of Sharpsburg. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 197 

"If treason, in other words, be any crime, it is 
tlie essence of all crimes ; a vast machinery of 
guilt, multiplying assassinations into wholesale 
slaughters, and organizing plunder as the basis 
for supporting a system of National Brigandage. 
Your action, and that of those with whom you 
are in league, has its best comment in the sympa- 
thy extended to your cause by the despots and 
aristocracies of Europe. You have succeeded 
in throwing back civilization for many years; 
and have made of the country that was the freest, 
happiest, proudest, richest, and most progressive 
but two short years ago, a vast temple of mourn- 
ing, doubt, anxiety, and privation — our manufac- 
tures of all but war-material nearly paralysed, 
the inventive spirit which was for ever developing 
new resources destroyed, and our flag, that car- 
ried respect everywhere, now mocked by ene- 
mies who think its glory tarnished, and that its 
power is soon to become a mere tradition of the 
past. 

" For all these results, Mr. Davis, and for the 
three hundred thousand lives already sacrificed 
on both sides in the war — some pouring out their 
blood on the battle-field, and others, fever- 
stricken, wasting away to death in over-crowded 
hospitals — you and the fellow-miscreants who 
have been your associates in this conspiracy are 
responsible. Of you and them it may with truth 



198 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

be said, that if all the innocent blood which you 
have spilled could hjd collected in one pool, the 
whole government of your Confederacy might 
swim in it. 

" I am aware that this is not the language in 
which the prevailing etiquette of our army is in 
the habit of considering your conspiracy. It has 
come to pass — through what instrumentalities 
you are best able to decide — that the greatest and 
worst crime ever attempted against the human 
family, has been treated in certain quarters as 
though it were a mere error of judgment on the 
part of some gifted friends ; a thing to be regret- 
ted, of course, as causing more or less disturbance 
to the relations of amity and esteem heretofore 
existing between those charged with the repres- 
sion of such eccentricities and the eccentric actors : 
in fact, as a slight political miscalculation or pec- 
cadiUoj rather than as an outrage involving the 
desolation of a continent, and demanding the 
promptest and severest retribution within the 
power of human law. 

" For myself, I have never been able to take 
this view of the matter. During a lifetime of 
active service, I have seen the seeds of this con- 
spiracy planted in the rank soil of slavery, and 
the Upas-growth watered by just such trickhngs 
of a courtesy alike false to justice, expediency, 
and our eternal future. Had we at an earlier day 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 199 

commenced to call things by their right names, 
and to look at the hideous features of slavery 
with our ordinary common eyesight and common 
sense, instead of through the rose-colored glasses 
of supposed political expediency, there would be 
three hundred thousand more men alive to-day on 
American soil ; and our country would never for 
a moment have forfeited her proud position as the 
highest exemplar of the blessings — moral, intel- 
lectual, and material — to be derived from a free 
form of government. 

" Whether your intention of hanging me and 
those of my staff and other officers who were 
engaged in organizing the 1st South Carolina Yol- 
unteers, in case we are taken prisoners in battle, 
will be likely to benefit your cause or not, is a 
matter mainly for your own consideration. For 
us, our profession makes the sacrifice of life a 
contingency ever present and always to be accept- 
ed ; and although such a form of death as your 
order proposes, is not that to the contemplation 
of which soldiers have trained themselves — I feel 
well assured, both for myself and those included 
in my sentence, that we could die in no manner 
more damaging to your abominable rebellion 
and the abominable institution which is its 
origin. 

" The South has already tried one hanging 
experiment, but not with a success — one would 



200 RECOLLECTIONS OP THE WAR. 

think — to encourage its repetition. John Brown, 
who was well known to me in Kansas, and who 
will be known in appreciative history through 
centuries which will only recall your name to load 
it with curses — once entered Virginia with seven- 
teen men and an idea. The terror caused by the 
presence of his idea, and the dajintless courage 
which prompted the assertion of his faith against 
all odds, I need not now recall. The history is 
too familiar and too painful. ' Old Ossawatomie' 
was caught and hung; his seventeen men were 
killed, captured, or dispersed, and several of them 
shared his fate. Portions of his skin were tanned, 
I am told, and circulated as relics dear to the bar- 
barity of the slaveholding heart. But more than 
a million of armed white men, Mr. Davis, are to- 
day marching South, in practical acknowledgment 
that they regard the hanging of three years ago 
as the murder of a martyr ; and as they march to 
a battle which has the emancipation of all slaves 
as one of its most glorious results, his name is on 
their lips ; to the music of his memory their 
marching feet keep time ; and as they sling knap- 
sacks, each one becomes aware that he is an armed 
apostle of the faith preached by him 

* Who has gone to be a soldier 
In the army of the Lord 1' 

" I am content, if such be the will of Provi- 



KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 201 

dence, to ascend the scaffold made sacred by the 
blood of this martjT ; and I rejoice at every pros- 
pect of making our struggle more earnest and 
inexorable on both sides ; for the sharper the 
conflict the sooner ended — the more vigorous and 
remorseless the strife, the less blood must be shed 
in it eventually. 

"In conclusion, let me assure you, that I rejoice 
with my whole heart that your order in my case, 
and that of my officers, if unrevoked, will untie 
our hands for the future ; and that we shall be 
able to treat rebellion as it deserves, and give to 
the felony of treason a felon's death. 
" Yery obediently yours, 

" David Hunter, Maj.-Gen.'- 

Not long after Greneral Hunter's return to the 
Department of the South, the first step towards 
organizing and recognising negro troops was 
taken by our Government, in a letter of instruc- 
tions directing Brigadier-General Eufus Saxton, — 
then Military Governor of South Carolina, Georgia, 
and Florida, within the limits of General Hunter's 
command — to forthwith raise and organize fifty 
thousand able-bodied blacks, for service as labor- 
ers in the quartermaster's department ; of whom 
five thousand — only five thousand, mark you ! — 
might be armed and drilled as soldiers for the 
purpose of " protecting the women and children 
9* 



202 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

of their fellow-laborers who might be absent from 
home in the p\iblic service." 

Here was authority given to General Saxton, 
over Hunter's head, to pursue some steps farther 
the experiment which Hunter — soon followed by 
General Phelps, also included in the rebel order 
of "outlawry" — had been the first to initiate. 
The rebel order still remained in full force, and 
with no protest against it on the part of our 
Government; nor, to our knowledge, was any 
demand from Washington ever made for its revo- 
cation during the existence of the Confederacy. 
If Hunter, therefore, or any of his officers, had 
been captured in any of the campaigns of the 
past two and a half years, they had the pleasant 
knowledge for their comfort that every rebel 
officer into whose hands they might fall, was 
strictly enjoined to — not " shoot them on the 
spot," as was the order of General Dix — but to 
hang them on the first tree, and hang them 
quickly. 

With the subsequent history of our black 
troops the public is already familiar. General 
Lorenzo Thomas, titular Adjutant-General of our 
army, not being regarded as a very efficient 
officer for that place, was permanently detailed 
on various services — now exchanging prisoners, 
now discussing points of military law, now orga- 
nizing black brigades down the Mississippi and 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 203 

elsewhere. In fact, the main object seemed to be 
to keep this Greneral Thomas — who must not be 
confounded with Greneral George H. Thomas, one 
of the true heroes of our army — away from the 
Adjutant-General's office at Washington, in order 
that Brigadier General E. D. Townsend — only a 
Colonel until quite recently — might perform all 
the laborious and crushing duties of Adjutant- 
General of our army, while only signing himself 
and ranking as First Assistant Adjutant-General. 
If there be an officer who has done noble service 
in the late war while receiving no public credit 
for the same — no newspaper puffs nor public 
ovations — that man is Brigadier-General E. D. 
Townsend, who should long since have been made 
a major-general, to rank from the first day of the 
rebellion. 

And now let us only add, as practical proof 
that the rebels, even in their most rabid state, 
were not insensible to the force of proper " rea- 
sons " — the following anecdote : 

Some officers of one of our black regiments — 
Colonel Higginson's, we believe — indiscreetly rode 
beyond our lines around St. Augustine in pursuit 
of game — but whether feathered or female this 
deponent sayeth not. Their guide proved to be 
a spy, who had given notice of the intended expe- 
dition to the enemy ; and the whole party were 
soon surprised and captured. The next we heard 



204 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

of them, they were confined in the condemned 
cells of one of the Florida State-prisons and were 
to be " tried " — i.e. sentenced and executed — as 
"having been engaged in inciting negro insur- 
rections." 

We had then some wealthy young slavehold- 
ers belonging to the first families of South Caro- 
lina in the custody of Lieutenant-Colonel J. F. 
Hall — now Brigadier-General — of this city, who 
was our Provost-Marshal ; and it was on this basis 
General Hunter resolved to operate. "Eelease 
my of&cers of black troops from your condemned 
cells at once, and notify me of the fact. Until 
so notified, your first family prisoners in my 
hands"' — the names then given — " will receive 
precisely similar treatment. For each of my offi- 
cers hung, I will hang three of my prisoners who 
are slaveholders." This dose operated with 
instantaneous effect, and the next letter received 
from our captured officers set forth that they were 
at large on parole, and treated as well as they 
could wish to be in that miserable country. 

"We cannot better conclude this sketch, perhaps, 
than by giving the brief but pregnant verses in 
which our ex-orderly, Private Miles O'Eeilly, late 
of the Old Tenth Army Corps, gave his opinion 
on this subject. They were first published in 
connection with the banquet given by General 
T. F. Meao^her and the officers of the Irish Bri- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR, 205 

gade to the returned veterans of that organization 
on the 13th of January, 1864, at Irving Hall. 
Of this song it may, perhaps, be said, in verity 
and without vanity, that — as General Hunter's 
letter to Mr. Wickliffe had settled the negro-sol- 
dier controversy in its official and Congressional 
form — so did the publication and immediate popu- 
lar adoption of these verses conclude all argument 
upon this matter in the mind of the general pub- 
lic. Its common sense, with a dash of drollery, 
at once won over the Irish, who had been the 
bitterest opponents of the measure, to become its 
friends ; and from that hour to this, the attacks 
upon the experiment of our negro soldiery have 
been so few and far between that, indeed, they 
may be said to have ceased altogether. It ran as 
follows, and appeared in the Herald the morning 
after the banquet, as portion of the report of the 
speeches and festivities : 



sambo's right to be kilt. 



Air. — The Low-Backed Car. 

Some say it is a burnin' shame 
To make the naygurs fight, 

An' that the thrade o' bein' kilt 
Belongs but to the white ; 

But as for me, upon me sowl, 
So hberal are we here. 



206 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

I'll let Sarabo be murthered in place o' meself 
On every day in the year. 

On every day in the year, boys, 

An' every hour in the day, 
The right to be kilt I'll divide wid him, 
An' divil a word I'll say. 

In battle's wild commotion 
I shouldn't at all object, 
If Sambo's body should stop a ball 

That was comin' for me direct ; 
An' the prod of a Southern bagnet, 

So liberal are we here, 
I'll resign, and let Sambo take it 
On every day in the year. 

On every day in the year, boys, 

An' wid none o' your nasty pride. 
All my right in a Southern bagnet-prod 
Wid Sambo I'll divide. 

The men who object to Sambo 

Should take his place an' fight. 
An' it's betther to have a naygur's hue 
Than a Uver that's wake an' white ; 
Though Sambo's black as the ace o' spades 

His finger a thrigger can pull. 
An' his eye runs sthraight on the barrel-sights 
From undher its thatch o' wool. 
So hear me all, boys, darlins I 

Don't think I'm tippin' you chafij 
The right to be kilt I'll divide wid him, 
An' give niM the largest half ! 

In regard to Hunter's reply to Mr. Wicklifife, 
we shall only add this anecdote, told us one day 



■RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 207 

bj that brilliant gentleman and scholar, the Hon. 
Sun-Set Cox of Ohio : 

" I tell you, that letter from Hunter spoiled the 
prettiest speech I had ever thought of making. I 
had been delighted with Wickliffe's motion, and 
thought the reply to it would furnish us first-rate 
Democratic thunder for the next election. I 
made up my mind to sail in against Hunter's 
answer — no matter what it was — the moment it 
came ; and to be even more humorously success- 
ful in its delivery and reception than I was in my 
speech against War-Horse Grurley, of Ohio, which 
you have just been complimenting. Well, you 
see, man proposes, but Providence orders other- 
wise. When the Clerk announced the receipt of 
the answer, and that he was about to read it, I 
caught the Speaker's eye and was booked for the 
first speech against your negro experiment. The 
first sentence, being formal and of&cial, was very 
well ; but at the second, the House began to grin ; 
and at the third, not a man on the floor — except 
Father Wickliffe, of Kentucky, perhaps — who 
was not convulsed with laughter. Even my own 
risibles, I found to be affected; and before the 
document was concluded, I motioned the Speaker 
that he might give the floor to whom he pleased, 
as my desire to distinguish myself in that parti- 
cular tilt was over." 



THE FEOTAN BROTHEEHOOD. 

WHAT DOES ENGLAND MEAN TO DO ABOUT IT? 
[From the Herald, May 5th, 1865.] 

The British authorities have displayed much 
anxiety of late in regard to the doings, aims, and 
organization of the Fenian Brotherhood. They 
asked our Secretary of State for " explanations 
and such information as he could give ;" and their 
demand was complied with, to the very limited 
extent of our Secretary's sources of knowledge. 
From our more ample fountain of Fenian informa- 
tion, however, we this day spread before Lord 
Palmerston, and the rest of mankind, all such 
particulars in regard to the Brotherhood as we 
deem of immediate public interest — only suppress- 
ing names, titles, and other important arcana of 
the Order as the same this day exist in Ireland 
and Canada, within grasp of the British authori- 
ties. 

In return for these very full particulars given 
gratuitously to her most sacred Majesty's govern- 
ment, we have to request Lord Palmerston at once 
to lay before us, through some one or other of his 
journalistic organs in the London press, precise 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 209 

data as to England's present policy of " neutral- 
ity ;" also wliat England proposes to do in regard 
to tlie rebel conspirators and conspiracies in the 
Canadas ; and finally, whether it is the immediate 
intention of her most sacred Majesty's advisers to 
send over to us, without fuss, the amount of our 
little bill for the damages inflicted on our shipping 
interests by the Alabama j Florida, Georgia and 
other Anglo-rebel privateers. We are not short 
of money just now, but would be obliged to Lord 
Palmerston for a settlement in gold without delay. 
He knows the alternative ; and, if not, our Fenian 
developments may prove to him instructive read- 
ing. 

TWO ORGANIZATIONS OF THE ORDER — ONE AME- 
RICAN, ANOTHER IN IRELAND AND THE CANA- 
DAS. 

"Full often when our fathers saw the Red above the 

Green, 
They rose in rude but fierce array, with sabre, pike, and 

skeen ; 
And over many a conquered town and many a field of 

dead, 
They proudly set the Irish Green above the English 

Red ! " 

Of the organization called the " Fenian Brother- 
hood," generally recognised as mainly Irish in its 
elements and aims, much has been heard, and but. 



210 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

little is known by the citizens of this country. It 
is by many thought to be a secret, oath-bound con- 
spiracy, created for revolutionary purposes in 
regard to Ireland and the Canadas ; and neither 
loval to the government of the United States, 
under which it has been allowed to grow up, nor 
unwilling to violate the laws of this country, if 
by so doing its darling object — the liberation of 
Ireland from the British yoke — could be either 
accomplished or materially furthered. No errors 
more malignantly false than are contained in this 
view of the Brotherhood, could well be imagined ; 
and in attempting to account for the general 
acceptance of such calumnies in the minds of large 
classes of our citizens, we are irresistibly forced 
to the conclusion that extraneous and well organ- 
ized agencies, of British origin, have been at 
work in S]3reading these prejudicial and unfounded 
aspersions. The Fenian Brotherhood is loyal to 
the land of its adoption in every fibre ; and none 
the less so because refusing to forget the land to 
which its members are bound by ties either of 
blood or birth. Is the British government so 
much the friend of the United States that to hope 
for, organize for, and labor for, the overthrow of 
its desolating power in Ireland must, of necessity, 
involve disloyalty to the Union? Or shall an 
organization which, within the past four years, 
has sent over twenty-eight thousand of its active 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 211 

members into the armies of the Union, be con- 
demned as unfaithful to the American cause, for 
no other reason than that it hopes yet to grapple 
with the tyrant of its native land, and to place 
"the Irish Green above the English Eed," while 
at the same time aiding to avenge America's quar- 
rel with the government which permitted a swarm 
of pirates to be sent forth from its harbors to prey 
upon American commerce in the hour of our 
sorest need ? 

The time has been in which to hate and strike 
against the red flag of England was no crime on 
this side of the Atlantic. The time may come 
again '; and — should this happen — the Fenian 
Brotherhood, we prophesy, will be found a ripe 
and powerful auxiliary to the arms of the Union. 

LOYALTY OF THE FENIANS TO THE UNION — 
SOME NAMES OF THEIR MARTYRS IN THE LOYAL 

CAUSE. 

" Faithful here to flag and laws, 
And faithful to our sire-land, 
Fighting for the Union cause 
We learn to fight for Ireland." 

That the Fenians, as a society, have been zeal- 
ously and actively loyal to the cause of the Union 
during the whole civil war just terminated, we 
shall presently cite the names and numbers of the 
ofQ.cers and regiments they have directly furnished, 



212 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

to prove ; while, for tlie present, we may content 
ourselves with pointing to the late Brigadier-Gene- 
ral Thomas A. Smyth, Second Division, Second 
Corps, who was Centre of the Fenian Order 'for 
the Army of the Potomac ; and the late Colonel 
Matthew Murphy, Sixty-ninth ;N"ew York, Corco- 
ran Legion, acting Brigadier-General in the same 
army, who was General Smith's associate both in 
the labors and perils of the field, and in the duties 
and direction of the Fenian Brotherhood. These 
are but two of the most prominent Fenians who 
have recently laid down their lives for the land of 
their adoption ; nor did they fight any the worse 
for popular institutions in America, because 
actuated by the hope of one day assisting to give 
the same to Ireland. That among the members 
of this association, which, in its official capacity, 
ignores all questions of American politics, there 
may have been not a few holding the same tenets 
as Mr. C. L. Yallandigham and the brothers Ben- 
jamin and Fernando Wood, will be freely admit- 
ted. The doctrines of the " peace democracy" 
had, doubtless, a fair share of Irish believers ; for 
all doctrines of such a character are always most 
popular wherever education has been most ne- 
glected. But we affirm, without fear of contra- 
diction, that in the ranks of the Fenians the great 
majority of members are and have been actively 
devoted to the cause of the Union — many thou- 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 213 

sands of them wearing swords or carrying mus- 
kets in its armies ; and for evidence that the 
Brotherhood have been openly and steadfastly 
loyal to the government under which they live, 
we may cite the second resolution of the first 
Fenian Congress, held at Chicago in Kovember, 
1863 — since reaffirmed, we may add, by the second 
Congress of the same Order, held at Cincinnati in 
the first month of the present year. This resolu- 
tion first gratefully acknowledges that " the exiles 
of all countries, and of Ireland most numerously, 
have ever found a home, personal freedom, and 
equal political rights " in the American Union ; 
after which the explicit declaration is made that 
" we (the Brotherhood) deem the preservation and 
success of the American republic of supreme im- 
portance, not alone to ourselves and our fellow- 
citizens, but to the extension of democratic insti- 
tutions, and to the well-being and social elevation 
of the whole human race." In yet another reso- 
lution the society deplores in touching terms the 
" large number of its members who, as officers and 
men, have perished on the battle-field while de- 
fending the integrity of their adopted country," 
winding up with an expression of *' unqualified 
admiration for their bravery and loyalty as soldiers 
of the American republic." In view of these 
facts, how infamous must appear the slanders 
which seek to impugn the fidelity of the Fenians 



214 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

to the land of their adoption I And how absurd, 
as well, when we remember that Colonel John 
O'Mahony, the Head Centre and original founder 
of the Brotherhood in both its branches — in this 
country and in Ireland — has always been, though 
taking no active part in American politics or party 
warfare, perfectly unreserved in his avowal of 
strong anti-slavery convictions. Colonel O'Maho- 
ny, after the abortive rebellion of 1848, retired to 
France, where he resided for several years in Paris 
on terms of intimacy with the most eminent phi- 
lologists and men of science in that capital. He 
then came over to the United States, where he 
found the vast majority of his countrymen 
strongly democratic and pro-slavery. But from 
the hour of his landing to the present day, his 
voice, when he was asked for an opinion, has 
never ceased to condemn the former slave system 
of the South as a crime against humanity, and a 
fruitful source of injury to the progress of truly 
democratic ideas in this and other lands. 

THE AMERICAN FENIANS NOT A " SECRET NOR 
oath-bound" SOCIETY WITHIN THE CATHOLIC 
PROHIBITION. 

" They smote us with the swearer's oath 
And with the murderer's knife; 
We in the open field will fight 
Fairly for land and life j 



THE JFENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 215 

But by the dead, and all their wrongs, 

And by our hopes to-day, 
One of us twain shall bite the dust — 

Or be it we or they 1 " 

Another attempt to injure the Brotherhood has 
been made by certain of its enemies, wbo have 
denounced it as "a secret society bound together 
by an oath," and as such distinctly condemned by 
certain Catholic fulminations, originally levelled 
against the Carbonari, Freemasons, and other 
similar societies ; while the facts, on the contrary, 
are : that no pledge of secresy, express or implied, 
is demanded from any candidate for membership 
of the Fenians in America ; nor is any oath what- 
ever required, at least on this side of the Atlantic 
and within the United States, to entitle an acolyte 
to all the privileges of becoming an accepted 
brother. Equally untrue is the vague allegation 
advanced by pro-British agencies against the 
order, that it is, in any American sense, an " ille- 
gal society," or has in view "illegal objects" 
likely to involve this country in a war with Great 
Britain. The members of the Brotherhood neither 
contemplate, nor have ever sanctioned, any breach 
of the laws of the United States, in their efforts 
looking to the liberation of Ireland from English 
thrall ; and while they would most gladly take 
advantage of any conflict between the Red Flag 
and Banner of Stars, at once to prove their fidel- 



216 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

ity and devotion botli to the land of their adop- 
tion and that of their birth, the general plan of 
their organization (as will be more fully developed 
hereafter) does not depend for its hope of success 
on a war between Great Britain and this country ; 
nor on the levying of a war against Grreat Britain 
by any foreign land whatever. For the Fenians 
it would be a happy chance if either France or 
the United States s-hould go to war with Eng- 
land — thus at once offering a supply of arms and 
the necessary munitions of war to the one hun- 
dred and twenty thousand able-bodied brothers 
of the order who are now enrolled and being 
rudely but efficiently drilled high up in the moun- 
tain solitudes and far down in the moonlit raths 
of Innisfail. Should no such chance occur, the 
peaceful and semi-public efforts of the Brother- 
hood on this side of the Atlantic, acting in con- 
cert with the secret, spy-proof, and powerful or- 
ganization of insurrectionary elements — already 
widely spread and daily spreading more widely — 
throughout Ireland, will not be without a very 
fair and flattering prospect of yet accomplishing 
its object. From this side of the Atlantic, the 
Fenians will only have to supply munitions, arms, 
and officers — matters perfectly open to legal pri- 
vate enterprise under the precedents established 
by the British government in favor of the South- 
ern rebellion ; while the more active Fenians, in 



THE FENIAN KROTHERHOOD. 217 

their native land, who are under an entirely differ- 
ent and admittedly revolutionary organization, are 
numerous and well disciplined enough, with such 
help as this, to drive every red coat and red flag 
beyond the limits of the " Isle of Saints" within a 
month from the kindling of the beltane fires upon 
her holy hill-tops. 

THE FENIANS, AS A BODY, IGNORE RELIGIOUS 
DIFFERENCES AND LOCAL AMERICAN POLITICS. 

" And oh, 'twould be a noble task 

To show before mankind, 
How men of every race and creed 

Might be by love combined. 
Might be combined — yet not forget 

The fountain whence they rose — 
As, fiUed by many a rivulet, 

The lordly Shannon flows." 

Our fellow-citizens of Irish birth have too often 
been made the prey of designing politicians and 
demagogues who have only sought their favor for 
the purpose of securing their votes — these traders 
in Milesianism, of whom we have far too many 
in the Democratic polifics of ISTew York, belonging 
to that well known class who are '' only Irish on 
election-day ;" but who — on that particular day, 
and to suit their own selfish purposes of place 

and plunder — are " as Irish as :" but no 

matter what ! No such use of the Irish vote, 
10 



218 TUE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

however, is contemplated by the chiefs of the 
Feniau Brotherhood, who in their corporate or 
organized capacity take no interest whatever in, 
American pohtics — each member, of course, being 
left free, as an individual, to cast his vote on 
whichever side of any American political ques- 
tion may to him seem best or most expedient. 
As Fenians, their only thoughts are of Ireland ; 
and their action as Fenians can have only one 
object — the independence and consequent happi- 
ness of the Old Land to which they are bound 
by ties either of blood, birth, or affection ; and in 
order to exclude effectually any designs that 
might be entertained by political demagogues to 
turn their pure national organization to base party 
uses, connected with our local wranglings for 
office and " the spoils " — it has been wisely 
resolved and solemnly set forth in the Fenian 
constitution, " that every question relating to the 
internal politics of America and the quarrels of 
American partisans, together with all subjects 
relating to differences in religion, shall be abso- 
lutely and for ever excluded -from the councils and 
deliberations of the Fenian Brotherhood, and be 
declared totally foreign to the objects and designs 
of the Order " — than which it would be difficult 
to find an instance wherein our impulsive Mile- 
sian fellow-citizens have arrived at a more wise 
conclusion. Every man of Irish birth or descent 



THE FENIAN BROTHEKHOOD. 219 

who' lives on the American continent, and all 
others who are friendly to the liberation of Ire- 
land, are invited to join them, " without distinction 
of class or creed ;" provided only that " their 
characters be unblemished," and their devotion to 
the main aim of the Brotherhood admitting no 
reasonable question. 

ORIGIN OF THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD — HOW IT 

STARTED AS THE " E. M. A." 

" They will not fail, the Fenian race ! 
They shall not faU, the ancient race ! 
The cry sweUs loud, from shore to shore, 
From emerald vale to mountain hoar, 
From altar high, to market place, 
They shall not fail, the Fenian race !" 

And now, having stated what the Fenians are 
not, and having briefly but sufficiently, we hope, 
refuted the pro-British slanders levelled against 
their organization, it is high time, perhaps, that 
we commence telling what they are ; and what 
progress they have made in numbers, influence, 
and discipline since the year 1859 — the year in 
which, after two previous years of drifting expe- 
riment by Colonel John O'Mahony and the late 
Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Doheny, their organi- 
zation began to settle down into its present shape 
and with its present title. Previously, in 1857, 



220 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

its inchoate germ had been planted by the gentle- 
men we have named, in an organization called the 
" Emmett Monument Association," or the " E. M. 
A." — the point of this name being that Eobert 
Emmett, when about being hung by the brutal 
sentence of Lord Clare, asked of his countrymen 
that no monument might be erected to his memory 
until his country should have become free of 
British thrall — an independent republic. 

'' Far better the silent, unepitaphed gloom, 
Until Ireland, a nation, can buUd me a tomb." 

An association, therefore, which proposed to 
build a monument to Eobert Emmett on Irish soil, 
implied an effort for the overthrow of British 
power in Ireland ; and this was directly the object 
of the " E. M. A.," as much as it now is of the 
Fenian Brotherhood. The term " Fenian " is, we 
suppose, an Irish translation or derivative from 
the word Phoenician — the Phoenicians having been 
the earliest colonists of Ireland, although other 
authorities trace the origin back to King Fion, one 
of the earliest kings of Ireland. Be this as it 
may, Colonel O'Mahony, the Head Centre of the 
Order, is a thorough master of the old Erse or 
Irish tongue, as witness his translation of Keat- 
ing's History of Ireland ; and in the term 
" Fenian " he has embodied the name recognised 
by Irishmen as that relating to the period in 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 221 

which their ancestors were most cultivated, pros- 
perous, happy, and independent. 

ORGANIZATION OF THE FENIANS IN THE UNITED 
STATES. — THEIR HEAD CENTRE, HIS POWERS 
AND DUTIES. 

" Kemember with a pitying love the hapless land that bore 

you; 
At every gentle season be its gentle form before you ; 
When the Christmas candles are lighted, and the holly 

and ivy glisten, 
Let your eye look back to a vanished land — to a voice 

that is silent — Hsten 1" 

The chief officer of the order in the United 
States and other countries is called the Head 
Centre of North America — an office filled, as 
before mentioned, by Colonel John O'Mahony, a 
gentleman of old and honorable Irish lineage, 
whose ancestors for a thousand years back have 
clung to the picturesque sides and fruitful valleys 
of thb Comeragh mountains, in the southwest of 
Ireland. This Head Centre of the Order in the 
United States is elected annually by a general 
congress, composed of the various State Centres 
ex officio^ and one delegate from each Circle in 
good standing, containing not less than one hun- 
dred members — with one additional delegate 
from each Circle containing two hundred mem- 
bers and over. This Head Centre has very 



222 THE FENIAN BROTnERHOOD. 

extensive powers, and is the only medium of com- 
munication between the Fenians on this side of the 
Atlantic, where their existence is legal and recog- 
nised, and the Fenians in Ireland and other pro- 
vinces under the British government, where they 
are regarded as conspirators of the blackest dye, 
and would be transported if caught. All Circles, 
to be entitled to representation in this Congress, 
must be " in good standing " — i.e. must have made 
regular and satisfactory monthly reports for at 
least the two months preceding, through the imme- 
diate District Centre to the State Centre — the 
State Centre forwarding these to the headquarters 
of , the Head Centre in this city. It is, in fact, a 
system precisely similar to the tri-monthly reports 
in our armies — the Adjutant of each regiment for- 
warding his report to the brigade Adjutant, who 
forwards it to the Assistant Adjutant-General of 
Division, who then transmits it, through corps and 
department headquarters, to the Adjutant-General 
of the Army. 

CENTRAL COUNCIL OF FENIANS- 



" Some on the shores of foreign lands 
Their weary heads have laid, 
And by the stranger's careless hands 
Their lonely graves were made ; 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 223 

But though their clay be far away 

Beyond the Atlantic's foara, 
In true men, like you men, 

Their spirit 's still at home." 

The Head Centre is assisted by a kind of 
cabinet called the Central Council of Ten, who 
are nominated by himself, but must be confirmed 
by the next Congress of the Order ; and the same 
mode of appointment holds good with regard to 
the Central Treasurer, and Assistant Treasurer, 
and the Central Secretaries — the financial officers 
of the Brotherhood having to furnish securities 
approved by the Central Council. This Council 
at present consists of the following eminent gen- 
tlemen, most of whom are Irish by birth as well 
as by blood : — James Gibbons, Esq., an extensive 
printer of Philadelphia ; Henry O'Clarence McCar- 
thy, of New York ; P. W. Dunne, Esq., of Peoria, 
111. ; William Griffin, a respected merchant of 
Madison, Ind. ; William Sullivan, Esq., of Tifflin, 
Ohio ; William R. Roberts, Esq., of New York ; 
Michael Scanlan, of Chicago ; Patrick J. Meehan, 
editor of the Irish American ; and P. Bannon, 
Esq., of Louisville, Ky. Brigadier-General Tho- 
mas A. Smyth, recently killed before Richmond, 
under General Sheridan, was the tenth member 
of the Council — his brother in arms and Fenian- 
ism, the gallant General Matthew Murphy, dying 
in hospital at City Point of wounds previously 



224 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

received in the movement on Hatcher's Eun, a 
few days after hearing of General Smyth's un- 
timely taking off. This Central Council elects 
its own President and other officers — its President 
assuming the duties of the Head Centre in case 
of the death, removal, resignation, or impeach- 
ment of that officer. This Central Council also 
may call conventions of all State Centres, or a 
general congress, in case of any emergency ; and 
such bodies when called together have power to 
impeach or remove any officer. The Council, too, 
must audit and approve all financial transactions 
of the Brotherhood, and is further charged with 
the duty of reporting progress once a year to each 
session of the Fenian Congress. The Central 
Treasurer of the Order is Patrick O'Eourke, 
Esq., and the Assistant Treasurer is Patrick 
Keenan, Esq., both of New York city. 

THE STATE CENTRES — HOW APPOINTED — THEIR 
NAMES AND OTHER PARTICULARS. 

" The patient dint and powder shock, 
Can split an empire like a rock." 

The State Centres of the order are appointed 
and commissioned by the Head Centre on the 
recommendation of a majority of delegates from 
the various Circles entitled to vote in their respec- 
tive States. The Head Centre, however, has 
power to reject such nominations, being responsi- 



THE FENIAN BROTHEKHOOD. 225 

ble to the next annual congress for his action ; 
and with the assent of the Central Council may 
even remove such State Centres as may be agreed 
upon, and appoint other and more trustworthy 
men in their places. The State Centres are 
charged with establishing District Centres, and 
organizing circles in their respective States or 
Territories, settling all minor disputes and report- 
ing twice a month to the Head Centre the pro- 
gress, numbers, and financial condition of their 
charges. The names, occupations, and residences 
of the various District and State Centres, so far as 
we have been able to collect them, run as follows: 
—New York, D. O'Sullivan, of Auburn, lawyer; 
Illinois, Michael Scanlan, of Chicago, merchant ; 
Indiana, Bernard Dailey, of Delphi, lawyer ; Ohio, 
J. W. Fitzgerald, of Columbus, merchant; Dis- 
trict of Columbia, P. H. Donegan, of Washing- 
ton, lawyer; Missouri, James McGrath, of St. 
Louis, lawyer; Kentucky, P. Bannon, of Louis- 
ville, merchant; Pennsylvania, James Gibbons, 
of Philadelphia, printer; Massachusetts, Daniel 
Donovan, of Lawrence, engineer; Wisconsin, 
John A. Byrne, of Madison, farmer and mer- 
chant ; Michigan, Judge Miles J. O'Keilly, of 
Detroit (own cousin to Private Miles, of 
the Tenth Army Corps); California, Jeremiah 
Kavanagh, of San Francisco, engineer; New 
Hampshire, Cornelius Healy, Captain United 
10* 



226 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

States Yolunteers ; Iowa, Patrick Gibbons, of 
Keokuk, merchant; Oregon, S. J. McCormick, 
merchant : Nevada, Andrew O'Connell, Esq. 
(related to the Irish "Liberator"); and District 
of Manhattan, James J. Rogers, lawyer. For 
the Army of the Potomac, the late lamented 
General Smyth was Centre, having succeeded the 
late Brigadier-General Corcoran in that capacity ; 
and in all our other great armies the commissioned 
and enlisted Fenians and men have elected similar 
officers. 

NUMBER OF CIRCLES IN EACH STATE BY LAST 
REPORTS — CONTRIBUTIONS TO OUR ARMY AND 
NAVY. 

" They fought as they revelled, fast, furious, and blind, 
And they left in each battle some brothers behind ; 
Till in far foreign fields, from Dunkirk to Belgrade, 
Slept the soldiers and chiefs of the Irish Brigade." 

The Circles of the Brotherhood range in num- 
ber of members from sixty, the minimum, to 
about five hundred — probably averaging through- 
out the States about two hundred and thirty mem- 
bers each. Of these circles, Connecticut, three 
months ago, had eight; California, thirteen; Dela- 
ware, three ; Indiana, twenty-nine ; Illinois, twenty 
six ; Iowa, fifteen ; Kentucky, eight ; Kansas, 
three; Louisiana, one; Missouri, nine; Montana 
Territory, two ; Maine, three ; Michigan, nine • 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 227 

Minnesota, three ; Massachusetts, sixty-five ; Ne- 
vada, three ; New Hampshire, nine ; New York 
State, forty-one, and in District of Manhattan 
(New York city), twenty-six ; New Jersey, five ; 
Ohio, twenty -two ; Oregon, three ; Pennsylvania, 
twenty-seven ; Ehode Island, ten ; Tennessee, 
four ; Yermont, six ; Wisconsin, eleven ; Army 
and Navy, fifteen — the Fenians of this latter 
naval and military class, of whom there were 
14,620 by last reports, voting by pro^y on certifi- 
cates of delegation supplied to them from the 
ofiice of the Head Centre. In the United States 
to-day it is estimated that there are about eighty 
thousand Fenian Brothers* in good standing, it not 
being required of members on this side of the 
Atlantic that they shall be able-bodied or take the 
oath of military service and obedience — two points 
which are the first pre-requisites in the Fenian 
Army of Independence which is being organized 
in Ireland, and already numbers over sixty-five 
thousand men. Of these, however, and their ela- 
borate military and spy-proof organization, we 
shall speak hereafter. Of the contributions of 
men and officers made by the Fenians to our army 
we can only call attention to a few of the more 
prominent examples in regiments sent from New 

* Since this account was written, the numbers of the Fenian 
Brotherhood in the United States and Canadas have at least 
trebled. 



228 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

York, the Central Secretaries of the Brotherhood in 
the various States being now engaged in compiling 
full statistics on this interesting point. E'early all 
the officers of General T. F. Meagher's original 
and famous Irish Brigade, as also of the Corcoran 
Legion (including Corcoran and Meagher), were 
Fenians. Colonel Mclvor, of the Sixty-ninth 
New York, belongs to the Order, as does also 
Colonel Grleason, of the Sixty-third, formerly of 
the Pope's Foreign Legion serving in Italy. In 
the Corcoran Legion alone, last year, twenty-four 
Fenian officers were killed or crippled, including 
Colonel Murphy. The One Hundred and Sixty- 
fourth New York was originally raised and offi- 
cered by Fenians who had graduated in the Nine- 
ty-ninth New York State Militia, otherwise called 
the Phoenix or Fenian regiment — a regiment 
which has educated and sent into the army three 
full sets of officers within the past four years, 
together with over twelve hundred men of the 
rank and file. In Milford, Mass., out of a Circle 
of one hundred and fifteen Fenians previous to 
the war, eighty at once enlisted in a body under 
their Centre, Major Peard, and of these but 
twenty-three are now alive. In Connecticut one 
whole Circle, of about two hundred, volunteered 
unanimously ; but, as their State quota was full, 
finally went off in the Tenth Ohio infantry, as the 
records of that State will show. Two-thirds of 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 229 

the Ninth Massachusetts infantry were Fenians, 
who went off under a Fenian Colonel, who was 
shot through the head at the head of his regiment. 
The " Douglas Brigade" of Illinois, chiefly raised 
in Chicago, was also in greater part Fenian ; as 
was also the brigade raised by the lamented Colo- 
nel Mulligan, who was high up in the Order. In 
the Excelsior Brigade, a large proportion of the 
officers were Fenians ; and the Forty-second New 
York, raised by the late Colonel William D. Ken- 
nedy, was chiefly organized by Lieutenant-Colonel 
Michael Doheny, one of the original founders of 
the Fenian Order, whose two sons, both of the 
same faith, have since done gallant service and re- 
ceived glorious wounds in the Army of the Poto- 
mac. In the Committee on Military Affairs of 
the Fenian Congress, described further on, the 
names of some of the more prominent Fenian 
officers of our Western armies will be found ; and 
when the reports of the various State Secretaries, 
now ordered, giving the numbers of men and the 
names of all Fenian officers who have served in 
the armies and war vessels of the United States 
shall have been received and compiled, the slander 
that the Brotherhood has been wanting in true 
allegiance to the land of their adoption will receive 
a withering refutation. 



230 THE FENIAN BROTHEKHOOD. 



STANDING COMMITTEES OF THE ORDER APPOINT- 
ED BY LAST ANNUAL CONGRESS. 

The Committee on Military Affairs of the 
Brotherhood consists exclusively of officers who 
are now serving or have served a full term in the 
army of the United States, and their names run 
as follows : — Colonel S. J. McGroarty, of Ohio ; 
Colonel B. F. Mullen, of Indiana ; Colonel John 
H. Gleason, Army of the Potomac ; Lieutenant 
Colonel P. J. Downing, of New Jersey ; Lieuten- 
ant Colonel Patrick Leonard, of ISTew York ; Major 
Matthew Donavan, of Massachusetts ; and Cap- 
tains Michael Bailey, of New York ; Joseph Pol- 
lard, of Rhode Island ; Michael Scanlan, of Mas- 
sachusetts ; Cornelius O'Brien, of Connecticut ; 
Hugh Rodgers and Thomas Finley, of Pennsyl- 
vania ; and Patrick K. Walsh, of Ohio. 

The Committee of Foreign Affairs is composed 
of Lawrence Yerdon, Michigan ; P. A. Sinnott, 
Massachusetts ; Captain Thomas K. Barrett, Illi- 
nois ; W. J. Hynes, Massachusetts ; J. C. O'Brien, 
New York ; Thomas Heanie, Illinois ; J. W. Fitz- 
gerald, Ohio ; and John A. Geary, of Kentucky. 
The Committee on Resolutions has but two mem- 
bers — Colonel W. G. Halpin, of the Army of the 
Cumberland, and James McDermott, Esq., of 
Kentucky. 

The Committee on Ways and Means has six 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 231 

members : — P. W. Dunne, of Illinois ; Patrick 
Gibbons, of Iowa; P. Bannon, of Kentucky; 
Mortimer Scanlon, of Illinois; Patrick Keen^, 
of Kew York ; and William Moran, of Missouri. 

The Committee on Government and By-Laws 
consists of nine : — Miles J. O'Eeilly, of Michigan ; 
B. Higgins, of New York; P. A. Collins, of 
Massachusetts ; Thomas McCarthy, of Tennessee ; 
Thomas Han ley, of Kew York ; J. McDermott, 
and P. F. Walsh. Centr'al Organizers at large — 
A. Wynne of Pennsylvania, and J. J. Eogers of 
New York. 

The Committee on the Fenians in Ireland has 
only three members — A. L. Morrison, of Illinois ; 
J. P. Hodnett, of New Jersey ; and James F. 
Finerty, of Indiana. The name of the American 
Chief Fenian Envoy to the Irish Revolutionary 
-Brotherhood of the Green Isle, is of course, for 
obvious reasons, not publicly stated — there being 
no inclination here to have the British govern- 
ment know any more than it already knows about 
his movements. All the reports of this officer 
and his subordinates, we may say, however, as to 
the cost of arms in Ireland, their quantity, and 
the kind and quality of ordnance and ordnance 
stores now in the possession of the "I. R. B.," or 
Irish Republican Brotherhood, together with his 
reports and accompanying documents on all mat- 
ters pertaining to the military organization of the 



232 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

said " I. E. B." in Ireland — all these matters are 
duly referred at each annual Congress to the Com- 
nftttee on Military Affairs, for their action and 
report to the Head Centre of the Brotherhood in 
North America. 

CENTRES OF CIRCLES.- 

DUTIES. — PLEDGE, INITIATION 
DUES, AND QUALIFICATIONS. 

" Come trample down their robber rule, and smite its venal 

spawn, 
Their foreign laws, their foreign church, their ermine, 

and their lawn. 
With all the specious fry of fraud that robbed us of our 

own. 
And plant our ancient laws again beneath our lineal 

throne ! 
The green alone shall stream above our native field and 

flood— 
The spotless green — save where its folds are gemmed 

with Saxon blood I" 

Circles are first formed by State agents, who 
visit different localities, beat np recruits, and ini- 
tiate enough members to make a provisional 
organization. This organization then elects a 
provisional Centre, who must fill up the Circle to 
at least sixty before applying to the State Centre 
for his commission, which will authorize his 
Circle to send a delegate to the next Fenian Con- 
gress. The Circle numbering sixty, its members 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 233 

elect a permanent Centre, who, if approved by 
the State Centre and Head Centre, will then be 
approved and confirmed by the latter. These 
centres, on the 2oth of each month, make out in 
duplicate fall reports of all their proceedings, 
receipts and disbursements, increase or decrease 
of members, etc. — one copy being sent to the State 
Centre and the other forwarded for file and com- 
parison to the Head Centre's headquarters. Any 
Circle failing to report for three months will be 
set down as "in bad standing," and will be cut 
oif from connection unless full and satisfactory 
explanations are forwarded. The initiation fees 
of each Circle shall not be less than one dollar — 
many rich and patriotic members having volun- 
teered as high as five hundred dollars ; and the 
monthly dues of each member shall not be less 
than ten cents — about fifty cents per month being 
the average actually paid in by each member. 
Candidates for membership must be proposed by 
one Fenian Brother and seconded by another. 
Their names, and evidence as to their good moral 
character, are then submitted to the Committee of 
Safety of each Circle — tTiis committee consisting 
of not less than three nor more than seven of the 
most discreet and trustworthy members of each 
circle. This committee is nominated by the Cen- 
tre of each Circle — but must be approved by a 
majority vote of all the members ; and its report 



234 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

on each candidate for admission has to be submit- 
ted for acceptance or rejection to a regular meet- 
ing of the Circle. If the candidate for admission 
be accepted, he then (in the United States) is only- 
asked to make the following very simple declara- 
tion, which is as little of an oath as can safely 
be asked : "I solemnly pledge my sacred word of 
honor as a truthful and honest man, that I will 
labor with earnest zeal for the liberation of Ireland 
from the yoke of England, and for the establish- 
ment of a free and independent government on the 
Irish soil ; that I will implicitly obey the commands 
of my superior officers in the Fenian Brotherhood 
in all things appertaining to my duties as a member 
thereof ; that I will faithfully discharge my duties 
of membership as laid down in the constitution 
and by-laws thereof ; that I will do my utmost to 
promote feelings of love, harmony, and kindly 
forbearance among all Irishmen ; and that I will 
foster, defend, and propagate the aforesaid Fenian 
Brotherhood to the utmost of my power." All 
political discussions as to any but Irish national 
affairs are peremptorily excluded from the delibe- 
rations of Circles ; while religious discussions of 
any kind are excluded altogether. Centres of 
Circles correspond with State Centres ^ State Cen- 
tres with the Head Centre. All correspondence 
with the Brothers in Ireland, the Canadas, or 
elsewhere in foreign parts, has to pass through the 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 235 

Head Centre — a law the more easily enforced, as 
only the Head Centre and Central Council know 
the true names and addresses of the officers of the 
*' I. E. B." and other brotherhoods in England, 
the Canadas, and elsewhere. Members of the 
" I. E. B." coming from Ireland, mnst first be 
certified by the Head Centre, to whom they shall 
show their credentials as brothers in good stand- 
ing when they left their native land. The names 
of all Fenian Brothers — or members of the 
"I. E. B." expelled for perfidy — are sent by the 
Head Centre to all State Centres, these latter com- 
municating them to all their subordinate Centres 
of Circles. When brothers are about changing 
their places of residence, they must procure, 
for a trifling fee, letters of introduction from the 
Centre of their late Circle to the Circle they are 
about joining. If these are in different States, 
the introduction must be avouched as correct by 
the State Centres as well. The decision of the 
Head Centre, approved by a majority of the Cen- 
tral Council, is absolute upon all points within the 
association ; and now we shall conclude this — the 
American — branch of our subject by giving the 
new charter-song of the cis- Atlantic Fenians, as 
the same is chorussed in their regular monthly 
meetings and other festive or business celebra- 
tions. It was written some years ago by a Fenian 
private soldier of the old Tenth Army Corps, and 



236 THE FENIAN BROTFIEKHOOD. 

goes glibly to the air of that one of Moore's Irish 
melodies commencing, " To ladies' eyes around, 
boys, we can't refuse, we can't refuse :" and its 
author called it : — 

THE FENIAN RALLYING SONG. 

Where glory's beams are seen, boys, 

To cheer the way, to cheer the way, 
We bear the Emerald G-reen, boys, 

And clear the way, and clear the way ; 
Our flag shall foremost be, boys, 

In battle fray, in battle fray. 
When the Fenians cross the sea, boys, 

And clear the way, and clear the way. 

That home where valor first, boys, 

In all her charms, in all her charms, 
Roused up the souls she nurs'd, boys, 

And called to arms, and called to arms ; 
One trial more 'tis worth, boys, 

'Tis worth our while, 'tis worth our while. 
To drive the tyrant forth, boys. 

And free our isle, and free our isle I 

We love the generous land, boys, 

In which we live, in which we live ; 
And which a welcome grand, boys. 

To all doth give, to all doth give. 
May Grod upon it smile, boys, 

And swell its fame, and swell its fame ! 
But we don't forget the isle, boys, 

Fom whence we came, from whence we came. 



THE FENIAN BEOTHERHOOD. 237 

Things soon may take a turn, boys, 

There's no one knows, there's no one knows, 
When the Stars and Stripes may burn, boys, 

Against our foes, against our foes ; 
When Yankee guns shall thunder 

On Britain's coast, on Britain's coast. 
And land, our green flag* under. 

The Fenian host, the Fenian host I 

Oh, let us pray to God, boys, 

To grant the day, to grant the day. 
We may press our native sod, boys. 

In linked array, in hnked array ! 
Let them give us arms and ships, boys, 

We ask no more, we ask no more ; 
And Ireland's long eclipse, boys, 

WiU soon be o'er, will soon be o'er ! 

THE FENIANS, OR "l. R. B.," IN IRELAND — THEY 
ARE BOTH SECRET AND OATH-BOUND— THEY 
DRILL AND ARE RECEIVING- ARMS — THE NEW 
IRISH REPUBLIC TO BE A STATE OF THE UNION. 

"A plenteous place is Ireland for hospitable cheer. 
Where the wholesome fruit is bursting from the yellow 

barley ear ; 
There is honey in the trees where her misty vales 

expand, 
And her forest paths, in summer, are by faUing waters 

fanned ; 
There is dew at high noontide there, and springs in the 

yellow sand 
On the fair hills of holy Ireland." 



238 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

In all the foregoing developments we have 
been speaking exclusively of the Fenian Brother- 
hood in the United States, where its aims, opera- 
tions, and existence are strictly legal, and where 
its proceedings are, in consequence, comparatively 
open. We now approach that branch of it exist- 
ing in Ireland, and known as the "I. K. B.," 
which is, in very deadly earnest, "a secret and 
oath-bound conspiracy," its mechanism being as 
nearly spy-proof as human ingenuity can conceive 
or make it ; and its organization having thus far 
defied the whole efforts, money, labor, tyranny, 
and seductions of the British government to break 
it up, or even unravel to one-tenth of its extent 
any single one of the many thousand cords which 
are gradually being woven around that now corpu- 
lent and fast-failing monster — the British lion, in 
Ireland. If it be a sin to be "oath-bound" and 
"secret," where to be open is to court a felon's 
cell and transportation to Botany Bay, through 
means of a "perjured sheriff, packed jury, and 
partisan judge," then are there over sixty-five 
thousand very heinous and able-bodied sinners in 
Ireland this day. In the United States the 
Fenians are not required to be able-bodied, nor 
are they sworn into military service, nor are they 
compelled to drill as soldiers, because the object 
of the Order here is only to prepare Ireland by 
internal organization, and by furnishing arms, ord- 



THE FENIAN BKOTHERHOOD. 239 

nance stores, and officers for the final struggle. 
But in Ireland each Fenian, or member of the 
"I. K. B.," has to be fit for the duties and trials of 
the camp ; he must take the most solemn oath of 
military obedience and readiness to turn out 
against the " red-coats" whenever called upon by 
his next superior officer ; and he must meanwhile 
attend regularly to the drill and other exercises 
which are now being vigorously enforced in 
every township and parish throughout the Eme- 
rald Isle by the officers, drill sergeants, and military 
sub-envoys sent over by the Order from America, 
and such other teachers in this line as may be 
otherwise provided for their instruction. Even 
with the present force of the "I. K. B." well 
armed, and with from three to five thousand vete- 
ran officers and non-commissioned officers of our 
late civil war to command them, it would not take 
a campaign of three months to leave no single 
red-coat or red flag from Kinsale to the Giants' 
Causeway. At present the great difficulty con- 
sists in smuggling arms and ammunition into the 
country, and distributing the same after they have 
reached the various secret depots along the Irish 
coast. Any trouble between either France or the 
United States and England would at once obviate 
this at present great cause of delay and embarrass- 
ment — more than two-thirds of the Fenians, or 
" Irish Kepublican Brothers," in their native land, 



240 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

now having to accept such drill as they can get 
with rude pikes, in the absence of the necessary 
muskets and bayonets. Uncle Sam, however, 
will soon have half a million muskets not need- 
ing employment at home, together with any con- 
ceivable amount of superfluous ordnance and ord- 
nance stores. With one-fourth of these landed on 
the shores of Ireland — of course, in case of Eng- 
land's refusing to pay for the damages inflicted by 
her privateers on American commerce — not a year 
would pass before the delegates of an Irish Re- 
public would be knocking at the doors of our 
National Congress for the admission of their State 
as the van-ward European outpost of American 
liberty and popular democratic institutions ! Let 
there be war between England and France, and 
precisely the same thing will happen — Ireland 
first achieving her independence, and then flying 
(where her heart has ever been) to the shelter and 
sure, strong refuge of the mighty American Com- 
monwealth. 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 241 

NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF THE " I. R. B." IN 
IRELAND — IT IS FLEXIBLE, POWERFUL, AND 
SPY-PROOF. HOW ITS COLONELS AND OFFICERS 
ARE APPOINTED. 

" The Green, boys I the Green ! 'tis the color of the true ; 
Oh, we'll back it 'gainst the orange, and we'll flout it o'er 

the blue ; 
For the color of our fatherland should here alone be 

seen. 
The color carpeting our dead — our own immortal Green ! 
Then we'll up for the Green, boys, we'll up for the 

Green — 
Oh, 'tis down in the dust and a shame to be seen ; 
But we've hearts, and we've hands, boys, full strong 

enough I ween. 
To rescue and to raise again our own immortal Green !" 

The Fenians in their native land are organized 
on the French plan of secret political societies — a 
matter to which Colonel O'Mahony gave special 
and very useful attention during his years of resi- 
dence in Paris; and which he some years ago 
transplanted to Ireland in one of his secret visits 
to that country, wherein he was long ago pro- 
scribed and outlawed, with a reward placed upon 
his head. This system we shall now briefly de- 
scribe, taking care, however, while we seek to 
interest many additional thousands of born Ame- 
ricans and others in the great question of Irish 
Independence, that we give no information to our 
11 



242 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

British enemies which is not already in their 
possession through the spies they employ, and the 
developments already made to them in the innu- 
merable trials they have had of persons charged 
with Fenianism. To everything additional, or 
that can benefit the British authorities and mou- 
chards in our disclosures, we make them heartily 
welcome — the Irish organization being so perfect 
as almost to defy detection or punishment, with 
any semblance of legality ; and these develop- 
ments, as we hope, having a tendency to cheer all 
friends of the cause in Ireland, and to arouse to 
greater activity and more fervent zeal all sympa- 
thizers with the movement on this side of the 
Atlantic, when we shall have shown them how 
much has been already done. 

The national power of the Fenians in Ireland 
is lodged in a Provisional Government, as we shall 
call it (though that is not the true Fenian name), 
consisting of four persons, who represent respect- 
ively the four Irish provinces, or principalities, of 
Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connaught. It is 
with these, and through these alone, that the Head 
Centre of North America holds correspondence in 
Ireland. These four members of the Provisional 
Government we shall describe for convenience as 
the Numerals One, Two, Three, and Four — the 
mode in which these officers have been selected 
and commissioned being secret and only known 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 243 

on this side of the Atlantic to the Head Centre 
and Central Council. It is the duty of these 
Numerals, each in his own province — as of Ulster, 
Munster, and so forth — to search out and discover 
such prominent and reliable men, possessing local 
influence and the necessary education, as they may 
be willing to approach with a view to the forma- 
tion of the cadare^ or skeleton, of a regiment. 
The Numeral, for his own sake, must be very 
cautious. He then inquires the general views of 
the gentleman he may think of selecting to be his 
"A," as we shall call it — a rank equivalent to 
colonel. He sounds him gently as to his willing- 
ness to try one other chance and risk his life and 
property for Ireland's liberation ; and if he finds 
him all right in these particulars, and a man de- 
serving confidence so high, the Numeral then 
broaches his business more directly, shows the in- 
tended " A" so much of his credentials as may be 
necessary, and then swears in and commissions 
this " A," if he be willing and properly qualified, 
as a Colonel of the Irish Kepublican Brother- 
hood. Of these colonels, or " A's," there are 
from twenty to thirty in each province, but not 
one of .them is officially known to the other, nor 
could give evidence against the other. Each 
" A" has been sworn in separately, and only 
knows the Numeral who swore him in. He does 
not know any one of the other three Numerals in 



244: THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

control of the three other provinces ; and as the 
oath is administered in secret by the JSTumeral to 
each "A," with no witnesses present, and as the 
commission is couched in language of no legal 
significance, and is only signed with a seal, there 
can be produced neither oral nor written evidence 
against any member of the Provisional Govern- 
ment, even supposing (as has never yet happened) 
that some "A" should wish to prove a traitor, or, 
as they say in Ireland, " to sell the pass." 

HOW THE CAPTAINS AND SERGEANTS ARE AP- 
POINTED — ORGANIZATION OF THE MEN AND 
THEIR DRILL — THE SYSTEM SPY-PROOF. 

" Deep let it sink in Irish hearts, the story of their Isle, 
And waken thoughts of tenderest love, and burning 

wrath the while ; 
And press upon them, one by one, the fruits of English 

sway, 
And blend the wrongs of bygone times with tliis our 

fight to-day ; 
And let it place beside our own the world's vast page to 

tell, 
•There never lived the foreign race could rule a nation 

well 1 
Thus, thus our cause shaU gather strength — no feeUng 

vague and blind, 
But stamped by passion on the heart, by reason on the 

mind. 
Let this go forth — a mightier foe to England's power 

than all 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 245 

The rifles of America — the armaments of Gaul ! 

It shall go forth, and woe to them who strive to check 

its speed ; 
'Tis God's own light — all heavenly bright — it is the 

Fenian's Creed ! " 

Eacli "A," or colonel, thus appointed, next 
proceeds with equal caution and at equal personal 
risk to select nine subordinates, wliom we will 
style " B's," holding the rank of captain. These 
are selected from men of his most intimate ac- 
quaintance, whom he can trust with his life. 
They are sounded, examined, and thoroughly 
tested before the direct project is opened to them. 
They are then sworn in separately as " Soldiers 
of the Irish Eepublic" — there being no one pre- 
sent at the time of such swearing in but the " A" 
(colonel) and the "B" or captain ; nor are any of 
the nine '' B's" ever brought together in official 
contact, so that they could swear against each 
other if traitorously inclined. Each '' B" only 
corresponds with, or officially knows, his colonel ; 
so that two " B's" might be next-door neighbors 
for ten years without either one suspecting the 
other's sentiments or affiliations. Each " B" or 
captain thus indoctrinated, has to select, sound, 
and swear in nine " C's," or sergeants, in like man- 
ner and at equal risk of his own liberty and pro- 
perty — these " C's," or sergeants, being the lowest 
officers of the Order ; and each " C" has again to 



246 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

select and swear in from among the neighbors he 
most intimately knows and trusts, nine " D's" or 
private soldiers, who are to form his squad. 
These "D's" are sworn in separately as in the 
previous cases, and therefore can bring forward 
no proof, if traitorously inclined, of the sergeant's 
having administered to them an illegal oath — 
which is said to be a high crime, amounting to 
felony under the " White Boy," " Croppy," " Cap- 
tain Rock," and other Irish coercion-bills passed 
by the British Parliament. It is true the " D's" 
have to be brought together four times a month at 
least for drill, and can therefore swear to each 
other as having been drilled together by a certain 
man. This, however, compared with the adminis- 
tration of an illegal oath, is a venial offence ; nor 
does England like to acknowledge that ten poor 
peasants coming together and drilling with long 
poles, or pike-staves, can fright her chalky isle 
from its propriety. Innumerable are the efforts 
her agents and spies have made during the past 
four years to pierce into the arcana of this secret 
and dangerous Order, but as yet wholly without 
success. Some few traitorous "D's" have been 
found, and a few " C's" or sergeants transported ; 
but the treachery has never spread farther. Two 
" C's" in two different provinces turned traitors 
and attempted to convict their " D's'^ or captains ; 
but the prosecution broke down in both cases so 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 247 

badly that nolle prosequis were entered by the 
Crown before either case went to the jury. No 
instance of a traitorous " B" or "A" has yet been 
discovered ; nor if any traitor should lurk among 
them, could he produce any evidence against his 
next higher in authority, by whom, in secret, he 
was sworn in with no witnesses present, and with 
whom alone he holds official communication. 
This is the " hard nut" which English lawyers and 
the English Parliament have now to crack — every 
Irish paper bringing us new accounts of abortive 
trials in Ireland on the charge of Fenianism ; and 
no debate in Parliament being complete without a 
demand from ex-Crown Solicitor Whiting to be 
informed by the "Honorable Minister for Foreign 
Affairs, what steps have been taken by her Majesty's 
government to bring the American government to 
a sense of its just responsibility for harboring the 
dangerous organizers in America of the vile and 
blood-thirsty Fenian conspiracy, which is now 
rampant in Ireland, for the overthrow of our 
beloved Constitution, and all the rights and safe- 
guards of property and religion."* 

* Pretty cool, this — isn't it ? for the fitters-out of the Ala- 
bamas, Floridas, and other ocean scourges of our recent war ? 
It is refreshins:. 



248 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 



ORGANIZATION AND OBJECTS OF THE FENIANS 
IN CANADA — LET THE KANUCKS LOOK OUT, OR 
" THEY WILL ALL WAKE UP SOME FINE MORN- 
ING AND FIND THEMSELVES DEAD MEN." 

" Hurrah ! hurrah ! it can't be far, when from the Boyne 

to Shannon, 
Shall flash a Hne of freemen's jQags begirt by freemen's 

cannon ; 
That coming noon of freedom ! those flashing flags of 

freedom ! 
The victor's glaive — the mottoes brave^may we be 

there to read 'em ! 
That glorious noon ! God send it soon. Hurrah for 

human freedom." 

Upon the organization and objects of the 
Fenians in the Canadas and other British posses- 
sions it is not our present purpose to enter. That, 
wherever they may be, they are no lovers or 
admirers of the Eed Cross of St. George is 
very certain. If the United States, for example, 
should desire to seize the Canadas as a material 
guarantee for England's making satisfaction in 
money for the injuries inflicted on our commerce 
by Anglo-rebel pirates, it is not immediately pro- 
bable that the Fenians in the Blue -Nose Land 
would offer any very violent or decided resistance 
to annexation. Every blow against England is a 
balm to the true Irish nature. Every humbling 
of the " red flag," everywhere and anywhere, is an 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 249 

act of long-delayed retribution to " our own im- 
mortal green." Let there be a war between the 
United States and England, and not a dollar in 
bounty would be required to enlist from seventy- 
five to one hundred thousand able-bodied and 
pugnacious Irishmen throughout the States in that 
holy strife. With all veritable Milesian natures, 
hatred of the British government is a part of their 
religion. Against the foreign usurpation which 
crushes, depopulates, and plunders their country, 
having long since disfranchised it, their hatred is 
as immortal as the mountains of their rock-bound 
island — as deep and wild as are the waves which 
lash the volcanic crags of Donegal and Antrim. 
Show a true Irishman the red flag or a red-coat, 
and you show him his native enemy and the sym- 
bol of that bloody rule which has either driven 
his race into unpitied exile or kept them slaves at 
home. There are massacres of six hundred years 
to be avenged; confiscations of James, Elizabeth, 
and Cromwell to be reversed; a tyrant church, 
hostile and foreign to the people, though fattening 
on their substance, to be blotted out ; rights of 
the honest laboring tenant against the libidinous 
and cruel foreign landholder to be established ; 
massacres by starvation in recent years to be 
avenged ; penal codes and treason -felony bills, 
and hundreds — yes, literally hundreds — of fierce 

coercion-acts to be erased from the books of Ire- 
IP 



250 THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

land's renovated courts. There are tombs to be 
built to the martyred dead, and many graves to be 
filled on both sides before this can be done. Of a 
truth our fellow- citizens of Milesian birth or 
blood are not loyal in any sense that could give 
delight to the soul of ex-Crown Solicitor Whiting, 
or any of his breed. They did not turn out in 
honor of that serenest youth, the Baron Renfrew, 
alias Prince of Wales ; nor are we at all clear 
that they sing or recite with any cordial spirit of 
unanimity " Croppies, lie Down," " The Boyne 
Water," the "Maiden City," or " The Health of 
our great and good King William," on the appro- 
priate anniversaries of these '' orange and purple" 
paeans. They are indeed a stiff-necked generation, 
and the sooner President Andrew Johnson goes 
to work and crushes them out, and kills them off, 
and utterly exterminates them, the better and 
happier will it be for our dear trans- Atlantic 
cousins, who equipped rebel corsairs against our 
commerce, and armed rebel armies against our 
lives ; and also for those sweet, pleasant neighbors 
of ours — the Canadians — who have refused to 
surrender the St. Alban's cut-throats and burglars, 
and who have made their whole frontier for the 
past four years a ISTorthern base of operations for 
our Southern foes. By all means let President 
Johnson take steps to crush out the Fenians at 
once ; and let all loyal, British-loving Ameri- 



THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 251 

cans take part with him in so doing in a hurrj. 
Thus endeth the Herald's first epistle on the 
Fenian Brotherhood I * 

* TMs article, copied in full in the London TimeSj was repro- 
duced in nearly aU the anti-British European papers, and created 
an immense sensation. At first the Times tried hard to laugh it 
down as " another of MUes O'Reilly's jokes ;" but its truth has 
since been painfully confirmed to the British Government ; and 
yet fuller and more painful confirmation lies in the immediate 
future. 



GETTYSBUEG, JULY 4, 1865. 

THOUGHTS OF THE PLACE AND TIME. 

A Poem delivered hy the writer on the occasion of dedicating 
a Monument to the three thousand five hundred Union Dead 
of that hattle. 

As men beneath some pang of grief 

Or sudden joy will dumbly stand, 
Finding no words to give relief — 
Clear, passion- warm, complete, and brief, 

To thoughts with which their souls expand ; 
So here to-day — these trophies nigh — 

No fitting words the lips can reach ; 
These circling hills, the graves, the sky — 
The silent poem of the eye 

Surpasses aU the art of speech ! 

To-day, a Kation meets to build 

A Nation's trophy to the dead, 
Who, living, formed her sword and shield — 
The arms she sadly learned to wield 

When other hope of peace had fled. 
And not alone for these who he 

In honored graves before us blent, 
Shall our winged column, proud and high. 
Soar upward to the blessing sky, 

But be for all a monument 



GETTYSBURG, JULY 4, 1865. 253 



An emblem of our grief, as well 

For others as for these, we raise ; 
For these beneath our feet who dwell, 
And aR who in the good cause fell 

On other fields, in other frays. 
To all the self-same love we bear 

Which here for marbled memory strives ; 
No soldier for a wreath would care 
Which all true comrades might not share — 

Brothers in death as in their Kves. 



On Southern hillsides, parched and brown, 

In tangled swamp, on verdant ridge, 
Where pines and broadening oaks look down. 
And jasmine weaves her yellow crown, 

And trumpet-creepers clothe the hedge 
Along the shores of endless sand. 

Beneath the palms of Southern plains, 
Sleep everywhere, hand locked in hand, 
The brothers of the gallant band 

Who here poured hfe through throbbing veins. 



Around the closing eyes of all 

The same red glories glared and flew — 
Tlie hurrying flags, the bugle call, 
The whistle of the angry ball, 

The elbow-touch of comrades true ! 
The skirmish-fire — a spattering spray ; 

The rolhng growl of fire by file. 
The thickening fury of the fray 
When opening batteries get in play. 

And the lines form o'er many a mile. 



254 GETTYSBURG, JULY 4, 1865. 

The foeman's yell, our answering cheer, 

Ked flashes through the gathering smoke, 
Bhthe cries from comrades tried and dear, 
Swift orders, resonant and clear. 

The shell-scream and the sabre-stroke ; 
The rolling fire from left to right, 

From right to left, we hear it swell ; 
The varying charges, swift and bright, 
The thickening tumults of the fight 

And bursting thunders of the shell. 

Now deadlier, denser grows the strife. 

And here we yield, and there we gain ; 
The air with hurthng missiles rife,- 
Volley for volley — life for life — 

No time to heed the cries of pain I 
Panting as up the hills we charge, 

Or down them as we broken roll, 
Life never felt so high, so large, 
And never o'er so wide a marge 

In triumph swept the kindling soul ! 

New raptures waken in the breast 

Amid this hell of scene and sound : 
The barking batteries never rest, 
And broken foot, by horsemen pressed, 

Still stubbornly contest their ground ; 
Fresh waves of battle, roUing in 

To take the place of shattered waves ; 
Torn lines that grow more bent and thin, 
A blinding cloud, a maddening din — 

'Twas thus were filled these very graves 1 



JULY 4, 1865. 255 

Night falls at length with pitying veil, 

A moonlit silence deep and fresh ; 
These upturned faces, stained and pale. 
Vainly the chill night dews assail, 

For colder than the dews their flesh I 
And flickering far through brush and wood 

Go searching-parties, torch in hand — 
'' Seize, if you can, some rest and food. 
At dawn the fight will be renewed, 

Sleep on your arms ! " the hushed command. 

They talk in whispers as they lie 

In line — these rough and weary men ; 
" Dead or but wounded ? " then a sigh ; 
" No coffee either ! " '' Guess we'll try 

To get those two guns back again." 
" We've five flags to their one ! oho ! " 

" That bridge — 'twas hot there as we passed 1 " 
" The colonel dead ! It can't be so ; 
Wounded and badly — that I know ; 

But he kept saddle to the last." 

" Be sure to send it if I fall—" 

" Any tobacco ? Bill, have you ? " 
"A brown-haired, blue-eyed, laughing doll — " 
" Good-night, boys, and God keep you all ! " 

" What ! sound asleep ? Guess I'll sleep too." 
" Aye ! just about this hour they pray 

For Dad—." '' Stop talking ! pass the word 1 " 
And soon as quiet as the clay 
Which thousands will but be next day 

The long-drawn sighs of sleep are heard. 



256 GETTYSBURG, JULY 4, 1865. 

Oh, men 1 to whom this sketch, though rude, 

Calls back old scenes of pain and pride : 
Oh, widow ! hugging close your brood, 
Oh, wife ! with happiness renewed, 

Since he again is at your side ; 
This trophy that to-day we. raise 

Should be a monument for all. 
And on its base no niggard phrase 
Confine a generous Nation's praise 

To those who here have chanced to fall 



But let us all to-day combine 

Still other monuments to raise ; 
Here for the Dead we build a shrine ; 
And now to those who, crippled, pine, 

Let us give hope of happier days 1 
Let homes for our maimed wrecks of war 

Through all the land with speed arise ; 
Tongues cry from every gaping scar, 
" Let not our brother's tomb debar 

The wounded living fi-om your eyes." 



A noble day, a deed as good, 

A noble scene in which 'tis done. 
The Birthday of our Nationhood ; 
And here again the Nation stood 

On this same day — its life rewon ! 
A bloom of banners in the air, 

A double calm of sky and soul ; 
Triumphal chant and bugle blare, 
And green fields, spreading bright and fair, 

As heavenward our Hosannas roll. 



GETTYSBURG JULY 4, 1865. 257 

Hosannas for a land redeemed, 

The bayonet sheathed, the cannon dumb ; 
Passed, as some horror we have dreamed, 
The fiery meteors that here streamed, 

Threatening within our homes to come 1 
Again our banner floats abroad, 

Grone the one stain that on it fell — 
And, bettered by His chastening rod, 
With streaming eyes upHfl to God 

We say — "He doeth all things well." 



A PICTURE OF LOBBY LIFE. 

THE BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 
l^Correspondence of the N. Y. Tribune, March ^27, 1865.] 

Albany, March 23, 1865. 
" Bia THINGS AROUND — HUSH ! HUSH I" 

Speech is silver, but silence is golden, says an 
old German proverb, which appears to have been 
adopted as their rule of action by the vast swarm 
of experienced and eager Lobbyists who are now 
here attempting to push through those two great- 
est swindles of the day — the Broadway and Cross- 
town Railroads. For the reporters of our various 
papers who are stationed here on duty to come 
out openly in favor of these measures, might lead 
to inquiries and involve said reporters in trouble 
with their respective editors — the editors, very 
likely, not being able to " see things in that parti- 
cular light." A judicious silence, therefore, is the 
best aid the Lobby can hope for ; and for the last 
few weeks the universal whisj)er. of " Hush ! 
hush!" has only been interrupted by, or rather 
mingled with, the crisp rustle of passing green- 
backs. '' Oh breathe not their names, let them 
sleep in the shade," have been the words of com- 



BROADWAY AKD CROSS-TOWN" RAILROADS. 259 

mand from Major-General Jake Sharp's City -rail- 
road Headquarters at the Delevan ; and for evi- 
dence that he has been in the main obeyed with 
military promptness and fidelity, you may consult 
the " Albany Letters " of the past three weeks in 
all the N'ew York daily and weekly journals — 
the Tribune, of course, excepted. 

THE CURTAIN GOING UP — GRAND PROGRAMME OF 
PERFORMANCES. 

This silence your correspondent, to his own 
financial prejudice and the public good, now pro- 
poses to break in a very decided manner — pulling 
up the curtain before the actors are all fully posed 
in their parts, and showing the whole details of 
pulleys, wires, trap-doors, dissolving views, and 
other machinery, which are already prepared for 
the Senatorial production upon next Tuesday, 
" with all the modern improvements," of the 
great Broadway and Cross-town dramas. The 
entire strength of both the Broadway and Cross- 
town companies will be exhibited in this letter — 
each actor being assigned to a part in which expe- 
rience has made him perfect, and the whole being 
under the direct stage-management of that veteran 
supervisor of such arrangements who is known in 
the circles of the initiated as the " Old Man," but 
otherwise and more properly our " Lord Thurlow 



260 BKOADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 

Weed." There will be tlie " clear-grit Broad we- 
gian and Cross-town Senators " coming up smiling 
for the first round, with Messrs. Law, Sharp, Kerr, 
•Brennan, Develin, and Sweeney acting as their 
bottle-holders in a corner of "the ring;" while a 
delegation of " Central Eailroad Senators " will 
also appear to assist them, these latter having their 
heads plastered and bandaged in all directions, 
their noses swollen to an unusual size, and their 
eyes in mourning — proud though unhappy me- 
mentoes of their recent campaign for " unlimited 
fares " under the " Old Man's " leadership."* 



RAILROAD COMBINATION. 

Next Tuesday is the day set apart by the Senate 
for the final consideration of the Broadway and 
Cross-town measures — it being quite likely, how- 
ever, that a vote of further postponement may be 
carried on that day by a junction of the Broad- 
way, Cross-town, and Central forces, in order to 
give the engineers of each concern more time for 
arranging the particulars of a bargain, which, 
carrying one measure, is to carry all three — the 

* Tlie Central Railroad had just been beaten, very unexpect- 
edly, in an attempt to have the clause of its charter restricting 
its fares to not more than two cents per mile abolished, so that 
it might charge what it pleased thereafter. 



BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 261 

thirteen " clear grit " Broadway and Cross- town 
Senators being willing to go solid for the increase 
of fare on the Central Eailroad, if the "Central 
fellows" can and will reciprocate the obligation by 
giving them enough votes to carry through their 
pet iniquities. The plot, you see, is a mighty 
pretty one if it will only work ; but that it can't 
be made work, and certainly " won't wash," is the 
opinion of the longest and oldest heads in this 
vicinity — Dean Kichmond being opposed to any 
such coalition, and swearing that, even if success- 
ful this year, it would raise such a storm next 
year against the " Central " that the very charter 
of the Company would be in danger. Behind all 
these petty intriguers, too, stands the shadowy 
figure of Governor Fenton, " grand, gloomy, and 
peculiar " — a mantle of mysterious silence wrap- 
ped around his thoughts, in his eyes a curious 
twinkle of amusement and curiosity, and in his 
red right hand a concealed weapon, which Jake 
Sharp now declares, with many epithets, he 
" believes to be a veto." 



262 BEOADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 



HOW THE PREY IS PORTIONED OUT — " THE 
PARTIES IN INTEREST." 

" One robber had his rights — the hghts, 
Bile-duck and spleen to chew o' nights." 

And now first to talk of the forces, resources, 
grantees, and Lobbj-agents of the Broadway pro- 
ject. The proposed grant — never mind the 
names printed in it — is divided as follows : For 
George Law, because he has power to enforce his 
claim, two-twelfths ; for Matthew T. Brennan and 
Peter B. Sweeney, on behalf of the corrupt 
Democracy, three-twelfths ; for Jacob Sharp and 
John Kerr, in consideration of their advancing 
the sinews of war, three-twelfths ; for the "Weed 
interest, as the natural political owners of the 
Legislature, three-twelfths ; and three-twelfths to 
be held in reserve for the coalition of which Sena- 
tor Demas Strong is the representative — Senator 
Strong being the present Treasurer of the Belt 
City Eailroad, for the passage of which he 
"worked hard and did good service;" and this 
Belt-road being the chief power and interest now 
pressing the passage of the Cross-town Railroad 
bill — a bill against which, therefore, we may of 
course expect Senator Slrong to fight with every 
energy of his nature ! This, however, is antici- 
pating ; and now let us return to our Broadway 



BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 263 

"muttons" — who will soon, we predict, be as 
dead as any muttons ever sent down to New 
York over the Harlem or Erie lines. 



SUPPLY OF THE SINEWS OF WAR — GOLDEN COR- 
DIAL FOR LEGISLATORS, AND WATER FOR THE 
STOCK. 

Such being the men to be benefited by the bill, 
we find that the " sinews of war" for the campaign 
have been furnished by the Seventh Avenue or 
Parallel Railroad — this being the line which 
would be most seriously injured by the laying 
down of a rival railroad in Broadway, and which, 
therefore, wishes to protect itself by obtaining a 
share of the grant. Of this Seventh Avenue 
line, Jacob Sharp and John Kerr are now the two 
controlling proprietors ; and, as an illustration of 
what these kind of people mean when they com- 
plain that a six-cent fare does not pay them any 
return upon their investment — we may briefly 
mention as follows : The Seventh Avenue Road 
runs from Fifty-seventh street to the Astor House, 
a distance of about four miles ; and its probable 
total cost of construction, with buildings, live- 
stock, and rolling-stock, may have amounted, at 
the extreme outside, to half a million dollars. It 
is, nevertheless, declared to have a capital of 
$2,000,000, with a bonded debt of $1,400,000— 



26i BEOADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 

about $200,000 of this debt in extra bonds having 
been put out in Wall street not many months ago, 
and the proceeds of said extra bonds being now 
believed to be up here in Albany and employed 
in furnishing the fuel to get up steam for the pas- 
sage of this Broadway measure — Mr. Jake Sharp 
in person being the grand almoner and lord- 
bountiful of this legislative charity ! 

THE GRANTEES AND THEIR DUMMIES— JACOB 
DOING A BIG BUSINESS. 

" These dwellers of the woods and fastnesses — 
These plunderers of defenceless villages ; 
These shadowy bandits, of whose names we hear, 
But never yet within the striking reach 
Of honest arm have they had heart to tarry." 

The names used as grantees in the bill, are, of 
course, of no account ; or of little more account 
than the "Peter Griese " and "J. Joseph Don- 
nelly " of a former Broadway scheme ; or the 
" John H. Doty " to whom your City Comptroller 
sold for $101 the City bonds for which Mr. 
Andrew Mills, of the Dry Dock Savings Bank, had 
offered him $105.* In most of our City Eailroad 
grants, the names of the grantees cannot even be 
found in the directory ; but, in the present one, 

* The swindling transaction here referred to has since been 
made subject of charge before Governor Fenton. 



BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 265 

the two last-named of these unknown gentlemen 
are supposed to be the representatives of the 
" Old Man ;" while Messrs. Jacob Sharp and John 
Kerr have each placed the name of a son-in-law 
in the proposed measure. George Law has used, 
to protect his own three-twelfths, the names of one 
gentleman who is connected with his bank, and 
another gentleman who is the brother-in-law of 
his lawyer ; while two other names are used as 
the representative '' dummies " of the Brennan- 
Sweeney interest. "Live-Oak George," by the 
way, don't want the bill to pass at all, and has 
not been up here this year, despite all efforts to 
bring him ; but he feels that if it does pass, it 
would never do for him, with his other heavy 
City Eailroad interests, to be " out in the cold." 
He says he already has in stock of this kind all 
the money that he can beneficially manage — 
owning the Eighth and ISTinth Avenue Eailroads 
altogether, and some small shares in the Sixth and 
Seventh Avenue lines. He formerly owned a 
great part of the Avenue D. and Fourteenth street 
line ; but this road — one of the most profitable in 
the city — has since been sold out by all the origi- 
nal grantees to their associate, Mr. Jacob Sharp, 
who is also sole proprietor of the railroad run- 
ning from the Dry Dock, foot of East Eleventh 
street, to its terminus in front of Barnum's Mu- 
seum — a road of brief route, large travel, very 
12 



266 BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 

light expenses, and enormous profits. In fact, if 
Greorge Law don't look out, the vigorous Jacob 
will soon be the king of our City Railroads. 
As to the politicians, they only seek these grants 
to sell them again for whatever they will fetch ; 
but Sharp is an excellent business man, and in 
more senses than one " a man of unbounded sto- 
mach," who is quite likely to absorb all weaker 
rivals. 

ROLL-CALL OF HONOR — NAMES OF THE " CLEAR- 
GRIT BROADWEGIANS." 

" We love them, we tell you, we love them a heap ; 
Like jQsh of the stalest in darkness they shine ; 
And when in their graves they lie down to their sleep, 
Above them the stinkweed shall genially twine." 

We now come to the "clear-grit Broadway 
Senators " — the men who have proved their fide- 
lity to this particular bill in many a desperate 
vote, and who may be relied upon, with perfect 
confidence, to go straight for this or any other 
similar measure in which " their friends " shall 
have been properly protected — by "friends" 
meaning those political combinations of outside 
operators who have been the carbuncle ornaments 
and jewels of our State Legislature during the 
last half-score of years. Of these there are thir- 
teen considered "certain" — a fourteenth, proba- 
bly ; but, as this fourteenth man has not yet gone 



BEOADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 267 

too far to retract, 'we suppress his name for the 
present, hoping that he niaj, even at the eleventh 
hour, 

"By penance done, 
With bitter fasts, with penitential groans, 
With nightly tears and daily heart-sore sighs," 

prevent the necessity of our placing his name 
before the public in the same roll-call of honor 
with that to which his more advanced associates 
have already condemned their reputations. These 
thirteen " clear-grit Broad wegians " are named as 
follows: Senators Demas Strong and Henry C. 
Murphy of Kings county ; Christian B. Wood- 
ruff, Thomas 0. Fields, and Luke F. Cozans of New 
York ; George Beach of Greene county ; Orson 
M. Allaben of Delaware ; Palmer E. Havens of 
Essex ; Cheney Ames of Oswego ; Frederick 
Julian of Chenango ; Stephen K. Williams of 
Wayne; Stephen T. Hayt of Steuben; and 
Wilkes Angell of Alleghany — this last-named 
Senator being Chairman of the Committee having 
special charge of reporting these Broadway, Cross- 
town, and all similar' measures. 



268 BKOADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 



ALLEGED HERMAPHRODITE SENATORS, WHO ARE 
NO HERMAPHRODITES AT ALL, 

" You'll find them true unto the death, 
Bold comrades in the strife ; 
I know the men, and on their faith, 
I stake my all — my Hfe ! " 

Having given the Senators who are claimed and 
pretty well known to be "certain for the Broadway 
measure," we give next the list of those gentlemen 
who are insulted by the confident assertions of 
the Lobby that they "can be fetched whenever 
wanted," and that " whenever their votes can pass 
the Broadway and Cross-town bills," such votes will 
be forthcoming. These are Ira Shafer of Albany ; 
James M. Humphrey of Erie ; and Eobert Chris- 
tie of Kichmond, Democrats ; and Ezra Cornell 
of Tompkins, and George Gr. Hunger of Monroe, 
Unionists. It is even added that an attempt is 
being made upon the political virtue of the 
honored Senator, George H. Andrews of Otsego — 
the " Old Man," a veteran in this species of seduc- 
tion, having been " horse-shedding " him to this 
end ever since the Broadway iniquity of the present 
session was conceived in sin and brought forth 
under the obstetrics of iniquity. Such gentle- 
men as these, however — with perhaps one possible 
exception — are not the kind of men to " contami- 



BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 269 

nate their fingers with base bribes," nor will they 
give to any Lobby agent, in their case, the pride 
of boasting — 

" I did corrupt Jfrail nature with some bribe." 

Senator Christie has said publicly that ''no man 
can live in New York and vote for the Broadway 
railroad : it taints everything it touches ;" adding, 
that although he is "what is called a Central 
Railroad man," yet he cannot afford to help the 
Central at any such price as this. It is the same 
with Senators Hunger, Humphrey, and Cornell — 
all gentlemen who value their own characters — 
Senator Ira Shafer being probably the only one 
of those claimed as " doubtful," whose devotion 
to the Central might possibly be so great as to 
carry him over to cast a Broadway vote. When- 
ever any amount of " horse-shedding" shall have 
drawn Senators Andrews, Munger, Cornell, and 
Christie into this business, then their friends will 
confess that there are several new things under 
the sun. 



270 BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 

HOBBS HITS THE NAIL ON THE HEAD EVERY 
POP. HE TALKS LIKE A BIRD — LIKE TWO 
BIRDS. 

" A man of solid argument, 

A man of just and great renown, 
Whose logic broadens slowly down 
From precedent to precedent." 

The matter standing thns in the main body of 
the Senate, let us see how it stands in the Com- 
mittee having more especial charge of the matter, 
and which consists of Senators Beach, WilHams, 
Woodruff, Angel, and Hobbs. Upon last year's 
Committee, Senator Angel, although Chairman, 
was pushed "out into the cold," and that nice 
little job, "the Harlem Corner," went through 
without him. This year, however, he has fought 
his way in again, and is now in full accord and 
partnership with his Broad wegian brothers, Beach, 
Williams, and Woodruff. This leaves Senator 
Hobbs, of Franklin — a very upright and able 
gentleman — alone in his glory to fight the " ring" 
— a position so irksome that he was about apply- 
ing to be relieved, but was induced to remain, 
possibly by the consideration that — 

^' If taken away, there would be none left 
To rail upon them, and then they would sin the faster." 

Hobbs, therefore, stays in the Committee and 
fights his corner like a hero, perfectly regardless 



BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 271 

of cutting against the grain of his " ring" asso- 
ciates, and notwithstanding the fact that the pre- 
siding officer of the Senate — Lieutenant-Governor 
William Gr. Alvord — is one of the heaviest 
stockholders in the Belt Eailroad, which he so 
powerfully helped to " put through" while in the 
Assembly. Hobbs pleads that his associates all 
went against the Harlem-Broadway bill last year, 
although ten times a fairer measurer in its provi- 
sions than the present one, so far as regards the 
public. Also that any such grant should be given 
to a regularly constituted corporation, having a 
certain limited capital and recognised stockholders 
— men who would be responsible legally; and 
who would both arrange to compensate property- 
holders along the line for injuries done, as also to 
withdraw all stages from the route, giving to the 
proprietors of these vehicles full and just compen- 
sation. He points out that the present bill does 
not contain one single provision for the benefit or 
protection of the public, being another mere naked 
" gridiron grant" to a body of irresponsible indi- 
viduals — not one of whom would retain any inte- 
rest in the gift ten days after it had been made by 
the Legislature. Suppose the old Broadway Eail- 
road bill had passed, and a person wished to com- 
mence an action against those two illustrious 
grantees — "Peter Griese" and "J. Joseph Don- 
nelly," for damages ! It is practically no better 



272 BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 

in tlie present bill, as the names in the grant will 
not be those of the actual proprietors. If the 
members of the Legislature desire to vote Messrs. 
Law, Brennan, Sweeney, Kerr, Sharp, and the 
" Old Man," from one to two hundred thousand 
dollars each, let the vote be a clean and open one, 
and let the dotation be made out of the public 
treasury ; but let them not add to the outrage of 
such a gift by utterly ruining the noblest street on 
the American Continent. The Seventh Avenue 
road has "watered up" its stock to $2,000,000, 
with a bonded debt of $1,400,000. How much 
" water" would the Broadway stock be likely to 
absorb, if granted to these parties ? And how much 
would be its bonded debt in two years from the 
end of this session ? Individuals can't be sued in 
such a connexion ; corporations can. Individuals 
can issue as much stock as they please ; corpora- 
tions can be limited. K this Broadway iniquity 
is to go through at aU, let it be consigned to the 
care of a corporation, with a limited capital, and 
with legal responsibility assured. 



BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 273 



NEW YORK, WITH TWELVE STITCHES IN HER 
SIDE, AND HER BACKBONE TRAVERSED BY THE 
TERTIAN AGUE. 

" The poor old woman was sick and sore, 

Plagued, she said, by those wicked witches ; 
Her back the fell lumbago bore, 

And her sides were full of rheumatic stitches." 

Thus — only much better — argues Senator 
Ilobbs ; but he talks to ears as deaf as if they 
were already stuffed with a rustling paper, the 
color of which we need not specify ; and all of his 
arguments applying to the Broadway road, are of 
equal, or even far stronger, applicability to the 
intended " Cross-town Eailroad." This latter 
project has for its pecuniary backer and banker 
the present Belt City Eailroad, of which Senator 
Strong is Treasurer, and Lieut.-Gov. Alvord one 
of the original stockholders. This Cross-town 
scheme should really be called the Darning- 
Needle Eailroad, being intended to give your 
city a " stitch in the side" every ten blocks or so, 
as follows : It is to run across Broadway from the 
foot of Courtlandt street, ISTorth Eiver, to the foot 
of Maiden Lane, East Eiver ; then back again, 
across Broadway, from the East Eiver to the North, 
via John street. It is to perform the same feat, 
charging across the city through Chambers street, 
and returning to the North Eiver, via Duane. 
12* 



274 BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 

Another stitch is to be given you at Ninth street, 
with a returning raid through Tenth street and 
Christopher. Ditto, repeated from the Hudson to 
the East Eiver, through Twenty -Sixth street, with 
a reentering darn from the East Eiver to the Hud- 
son, through Twenty-Seventh street. There are 
two other sets of darns higher up the island, the 
exact locahties of which I have forgotten — the 
whole project, let me add, being literally " one of 
the darn'dest" that has ever yet been broached. 
The Broadway swindle is to run right down the 
backbone of your island, like a fit of the tertian 
aarue : while this Cross-town abomination is to 

O 7 

keep giving you a punch in the ribs every ten 
blocks you walk. 

CHIEF OPERATORS OF THE CROSS-TOWN RAIL- 
ROAD — ENTER MESSRS. PURSER AND CONOVER 
WITH TWO FLIP-FLAPS. 

As to the personnel of this Cross-town affair, it 
is very numerous and greatly mixed up, being 
considered by many even a " bigger thing" than 
Broadway itself; for the fare is to be the same as 
on all other roads, while the distance traversed 
will rarely much exceed one mile. We therefore 
find in it tlie Belt Kailroad people, who supply it 
with money just as the Seventh Avenue line sup- 
plies the Broadway project ; and, as grand hidal- 



BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 275 

gos of the Belt, we have Senator Strong, Lieut.- 
Gov. Alvord and John Butler. Also the " Sixth 
Ward family," including " Peter Griese ;" and the 
" Old Man's family," including your Corporation 
Counsel. Whether Kerr and Sharp are in it, is 
not known to your correspondent ; but we have 
here to add to our original stock of actors in the 
Broadway scheme an entirely new and very inter- 
esting body of performers who are known as the 
" Tax Office family," headed by Messrs. George 
H. Purser, Tax Commissioner, Assistant Corpora- 
tion Counsel, etc. ; Dan Conover and Company — 
Mr. Conover also carrying in his pocket the bill 
organizing the " Manhattan Land Company," 
otherwise known as " the Great Dirt Bill" — a bill 
very much of the original Fort-Gansevoort pat- 
tern ; but so vast that its prototype beside it would 
be but a wart beside Ossa — thus borrowing, and, 
we fear, rather injuring, one of Shakspeare's 
most passionate metaphors. 



276 BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 



QUOTATION OF ONE STANZA — COULDN'T STAND 
ANOTHER — FROM OUR " CRAZY POET." 

On next Tuesday these Broadway and Cross- 
town monsters are to come up for judgment, being 
made the special order of the day ; and, as they 
have been hideous in their lives — an idea some- 
where used by another writer — in their deaths let 
us hope they will not be divided. They are the 
Siamese twins of the Lobby, and either both must 
live or both perish. There are some verses up 
here written by our " Crazy Poet" — the man, you 
know, wearing peacock's feathers in his hat and 
having his breast all covered with old coins and 
gimcracks, who stands on the steps of the capitol 
each day scrutinizing the faces of the members as 
they pass in or out. They are addressed " To the 
Most Honorable the Honest Senators of New 
York," and have evidently reference to the bring- 
ing up of the Broadway and Cross-town Eailroad 
bills next Tuesday. They commence : 

" When comes the day aU hearts to weigh 

If true they be, or vile, 
Will ye forget the sacred debt 

Ye owe Manhattan Isle ? 
Shall ' healthy beats' through all her streets 

Their swindling railroads hustle. 
While in your fobs, made rich by jobs, 

The bribing greenbacks rustle ? " 



BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 277 

GENERAL GAME OF EAR-WIGGING ALL ROUND — 
EVERY HORSE-SHED CROWDED, AND BUTTON- 
HOLES AT A PREMIUM. 

This specimen must content you, as I have not 
time to copy the balance ; and, besides, I do not 
think our " Crazy Poet " correct in believing that 
next Tuesday will be the final day. The "clear- 
grit " Broad wegians, as I said before, need a little 
delay, as they are trying to patch up a treaty of 
alliance, offensive and defensive, with the badly- 
beaten Central fellows — the Broadwegians offering 
to vote for giving the Central two and a half cents 
per mile, in return for the support of the follow- 
ing four gentlemen, which, if secured, would 
carry the Broadway and Cross-town bills — they 
being thirteen themselves, and the total number 
of the Senate thirty-two. They expect by this 
proffered bribe to get the votes of Senator An- 
drew D. White of Onondaga (Unionist), and Ira 
Shafer, Eobert Christie, and James M. Humphrey 
of Erie (Democrats) ; but we tell them the thing 
can't be done at that, or any other price. It is 
quite probable, however, that these last-named 
gentlemen may join in voting for a postponement 
of the Broadway and Cross-town bills next Tues- 
day, in order to give time for further negotiation, 
and to see what may or may not be brought about 
by the permanent game of poker going on in 



278 BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 

Jaka Sharp's parlor at the Delevan — a very potent 
Lobby agency ; together with the various " horse- 
shedding" operations which everybody in the 
interest of every scheme is now trying upon 
every one else who is not. 

" Oh, I have seen corruption boil and bubble 
'Till it o'erran the stews. Laws for all faults ; 
But faults so countenanced that the strong statutes 
Stand Hke the forfeits in a barber's shop — 
Things more in mock than mark ! " 

That we have laws intended to restrain bribery, 
and that the lobby-agent's business of corrupting 
the very fountains of legislation is a felonious 
calling, no one doubts ; and yet who ever heard 
of a single case of the kind in this State being 
brought up for trial ? The " strong statutes " are 
powerless against the apparently universal demo- 
ralization of this capital ; and when we come to 
trace back whence all this villany has flowed out 
upon us * * *. But that would be an endless 
consideration. 



BEOADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 279 

GOy. FENTON'S ATTITUDE — WE GO OUR ENTIRE 
PILE ON HIS FIDELITY. 

" Amid the lewd passions of this heady time 
He stands unmoved ; as, in the stormy swill 
Of the wild waves upon a rocky coast, 
Some granite column heaves its shoulder up, 
Crowned with a light wliich seamen bless afar." 

This letter has not been a cheerful one. Let 
me conclude with something pleasant, to find 
which I pass out of the lobby and enter the 
Executive Chamber. No matter what takes place 
in the Senate or Assembly Chambers, or both, we 
have here a power too pure for the foul fingers of 
corruption to approach — too high to be influenced 
by any of the little mousing schemes which are in 
operation to entangle him. Personal honesty, and 
his veto of this very bill last session, were the 
redeeming features of Governor Seymour's admi 
nistration ; and the same quality, and a like act, 
— should the present bill pass the Senate — will 
doubly assure the people of our State that, in 
selecting Governor Fenton, they made a choice 
most wise in all particulars. He does not wish to 
be obliged to use his veto power in this matter, 
but hopes and relies that his friends in the Senate 
will not allow this poisoned chalice to be present- 
ed to his lips. If they do, he may still "love 
them," but they " will never more be ofiicers of 



280 BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 

his." With them the whole question rests ; for 
although the bill passes from their House to the 
Assembly — in that body there is known to be a 
partly political, partly venal majority, only eager 
for the spoil — the price of votes being openly 
talked of as $500 down for each vote on each of 
the two bills — Broadway and Cross-town — and 
$2,500 additional on the signing of both bills by 
the Governor, being an aggregate of $3,500 all 
told. Their thousand dollars each these unfortu- 
nate creatures may earn ; but let them be well 
assured that, under no possible circumstances, can 
the balance promised ever become their due. If 
they think $1,000 a fair price for their political 
lives, let them accept what is offered, and go down 
to the infamy of oblivion with the brand of this 
poorly paid iniquity upon their dishonored 
brows.* 

And now, my beloved brethren, this city rail- 
road sermon will close with one brief extract from 
a pure Greek poet — an extract which can be sung 
melodiously to that divine Italian air, the " Groves 
of Blarney," and in the singing of which you are 
all respectfully requested to join chorus. It reads 

* This letter killed the bill for that Session ; but as the pro- 
posed theft is of a franchise worth at least $3,000,000, we shall 
see the same or kindred villains at work in the same scheme 
year in and year out until either their villany is accomplished 
or they are hung by an indignant people. 



BROADWAY AND CROSS-TOWN RAILROADS. 281 

as follows, and the rank of its author was that of 
private soldier in the armies of the Union ; and 
his name was — but I happen just now to forget 
it: 

" Some people wondher 

Whin they see the plundher 
That is goin on daily in full public view, 

That the town don't rise up, 

Fix a hundhred ties up, 
Afid do some lynchin' on the godless crew. 

But we say to the divil 

Wid all such dhrivel, 
The 'machines' is mighty an' they can't be beat; 

So let's all ' go in/ boys, 

'Tis the way to win, boys, 
An' let aich of us have a railroad in his private street !" 

Yerj obediently your servant, 

M. O'K. 



HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 

CONTRIBUTIONS TO ITS ALBUM FROM DISTIN- 
GUISHED AUTHORS. 

Mr. Wm. Stuart, of the Winter Garden 
Theatre, keeps for the benefit of himself and 
friends, a very delightful villa near New London, 
where one can pass a few days more agreeably 
than in any other house at present known to us. 
The villa is delightfully located, overlooking the 
broadest part of the Sound, and with very pretty 
garden and other grounds around it. The snipe, 
duck, and plover-shooting in the vicinity is excel- 
lent ; while of the warm and refined hospitality 
of the occupier and proprietor we need not speak, 
nor of that eminent social genius which draws 
around him men of the most diverse opinions and 
stations, and can yet harmonize all otherwise war- 
ring and discordant elements into an agreeable 
mosaic of very pleasant and enlivening contradic- 
tions. 

At this " Home of the Good Samaritan for the 
used-up children of Bohemia," as one guest called 
it, we meet every one that is any one, and nobody 
that is not something. We have bankers, journal- 



HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 283 

ists, sportsmen, tragedians, poets, brokers, diplo- 
matists, foreign celebrities, domestic representa- 
tives, warriors, lawyers, yacbtmen, comedians, 
dramatists — an omnium gatberum, in fact, of all 
tbat is remarkable, queer, fantastic, or note-wortby 
witbin tbe extensive circle of Mr. Stuart's 
acquaintance. 

Last year tbe institution of an album was 
started, in wbicb eacb guest is requested to write 
bis name during bis visit and attacb tbereto any 
rbymes, sentiments, or otber remarks be may feel 
prompted to leave bebind bim for tbe benefit of 
tbose guests wbo are to follow bim in tbe revolv- 
ing circle of manager Stuart's bospitality ; and it 
is from tbis volume tbat we make tbe following 
extracts, tbe first of wbicb, on opening tbe volume, 
we find to be in a bandwriting tbat looks as 
familiar as our own : 

RULES 

For the government of the Home of the Good Samaritan^ in 
ivhich all worthy and used-up children of Bohemia find 
hospitable and happy ivelcome : 

In tlie home of the Good Samaritan 

You must be extremely nice, 

Emphatic and most precise, 
In doing exactly the thing you please : 
For the rule of the Good Samaritan 
Is " Every man at his ease." 



284 HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 

In the home of the GTood Samaritan 
With the bright blue bay before you, 
The shady veranda o'er you, 

And the pleasant bottles in the room behind ; 

You must feel like a G-ood Samaritan 
To all of human kind I 

In the home of the G-ood Samaritan 

Your talk may have all variety, 

Save that pohtics or piety, 
If gabbled about some grief may brew ; 
And to feel Hke a G-ood Samaritan 

These topics we must eschew. 

To the Home of the Good Samaritan, 
From the dust and heat of the town, 
Bohemia rushes gladly down — 

The gifted, the witty, the wise, the queer ; 

" And oho ! " says the Good Samaritan, 

" You are all of you welcome here ! " 

By order of Grand Hierarch, 

GULIELMUS StUARTIUS. 

Mi-LES Atj-Relius, 

A. A. G., and Chief of Staff. 

Following this introduction, there are verses 
and versicles, sentiments and sentimentalities, sage 
proverbs, capital toasts, pungent aphorisms, and 
judicious anecdotes — original and otherwise, but 
mostly original — in the handwriting and bearing 
the signatures of nearly all the most prominent 



HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 285 

of that class whom we recognise in New York as 
belonging to the Higher Bohemia. 

As samples of the contents of this really remark- 
able and valuable volume, which Mr. Stuart should 
be restrained by no mauvais honte from publishing, 
if only as one of the curiosities of our literature 
— we have extracted, and here append with the 
permission of their respective and distinguished 
authors, the following /ei^x d^ esprit on certain pass- 
ing topics of the day from the pages of the Grood 
Samaritan's Album. 

In the clear, large, and beautiful Italian chiro- 
graphy of the Hon. Horace Greeley, every letter 
like the best English copperplate, and every sen- 
tence ringing with the sharp, military, and militant 
spirit of that distinguished bard, warrior, journal- 
ist, philanthropist, and statesman of Printing- 
House Square, we find the subjoined stirring ap- 
peal in behalf of a then-much-needed household 
economy, dated July 4, 1865. 

THE LEAGUE OF ANTI-BEEFERS. 

Pass the word along the line, 

Let the butchers come to grief; 
When we breakfast, sup, or dine, 

Let us shun the sight of beef I 
Let it be as flesh of swine, 

Unto Israel's strict believers ; 
And, till present rates decUne, 

Let us all be Anti-Becfers ! 



286 HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 

Lovely maid and tender wife, 

Soon our butcher-foes we'll humble ; 
Join our league and share our strife, 

'Till the beefy idol tumble ! 
Kaise your glistening hands to heaven, 

And swear — however fashion differs — 
That, until meat is cheaper given. 

You join the League of Anti-Beefers. 

Nor with hunger need we pine, 

While the trees their fruitage render ; 
Fish are juicy, fresh, and fine, 

Salads, too, are crisp and tender. 
Join the banner that we raise ; 

Already, see ! the butcher quivers I 
And victory's wreath, ere many days. 

Shall crown the brows of Anti-Beefers ! 

After this, in tlie revered handwriting of Wm. 
Cullen Bryant, and with all the gloomy earnest- 
ness and poetic beauty of the author of Thanatop- 
${s, we find the remarkable eulogy hereinafter set 
forth of Mayor Gunther, Eecorder Hoffman, City 
Inspector Boole, Corporation Counsel John E. 
Develin, and Comptroller Multiply Taxes Bren- 
nan, for their official agency in giving the contract 
for cleaning the streets of New York to those three 
distinguished patriots — Messrs. Brown, Shepherd 
Knapp, andDevoe. While Bryant's beautiful Lmes 
to a Seagull live, and they will live for ever, this 
touching tribute to municipal merit can never fade 
away from the recollection of our grateful citizens : 



HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 287 



SONG OF KING PESTILENCE. 

I am monarch of all I survey, 

No breeze my fierce ardor can cool, 
I am Kiag of Manhattan to-day, 

Thanks to Brenn^n, and Devehn, and Boole ; 
Nor be Hoffman and Gunther forgot, 

Who nurtured my birth with thicir smiles — 
And the weather's deUghtfully hot, 

And the garbage rots rankly in piles. 

Oh, cleanUness, comfort, and health! 

Oh, summer-airs, laden with sweets ! 
To increase of some villains the wealth 

Have you fled, aijd for ever, our street? 
Must King Pestilence riot and rule 

Unchecked and at will o'er the town, 
To enrich Brennan, Develin, and Boole, 

And contractors Devoe, Knapp, and Brown ? 

In the tenement-houses where thick 

The poor, hke red herrings, are stowed ; 
In the alleys where fever is quick, 

And consumption hath made its abode ; 
Where the offal is foul as the "ring" 

Of Tweed, Ottiwell, Farley and Co.— 
I am king — I am king — I am king ! 

Thanks to Brown, Shepherd Knapp, and Devoe I 

Oh, mother ! with babe at your breast, 

As its life flickers faintly and low, 
Be sure your full thanks are expressed 

To contractors Brown, Knapp, and Devoe I 



288 HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 

Their gain is the object that keeps 

Our gutters with ordure defiled ; 
And 'tis they pile the poison in heaps 

That is strangling the life of your child. 

The bright air of summer is dense 

With glutinous odors and stenches ; 
We breathe at a dreadful expense 

Of olfactory tortures and wrenches ; 
But this comforting fact we should know, 

And close to our hearts we should lock it — 
That contractors Brown, Knapp, and Devoe 

From this job two clear millions will pocket ! 

The graveyards will fill, to be sure, 

Much faster than need would demand; 
And a full double-crop of the poor 

I will reap with my skeleton hand; 
Oh, the widows may mourn for the dead, 

And the orphans may snivel their woe — 
But the purses will largely be fed 

Of contractors Brown, Knapp, and Devoe ! 

Oh, Fenton, our Governor dear ! 

To you our entreaties ascend ; 
Let your guillotine, gleaming and clear, 

On the necks of these villains descend ! 
The basket of saw-dust, we know. 

Will keep the heads pleasant and cool 
Of contractors Brown, Knapp, and Devoe, 

And their " chums" — Brennan, Develin, and Boole ! 

The next contribution claiming special atten- 
tion is in the sharp calligraphy of James Gordon 



HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 289 

Bennett, Senior, of the Herald^ and will at once 
recall to every lover of poetry the affecting Lines 
to Marianne from the same exalted source, which 
appeared some years ago in Bonner's Ledger. Mr. 
Bennett's admiration of the pure legislative charac- 
ter of Senator Demas Strong, of Brooklyn, is evi- 
dently as powerful as the distinguished legislator's 
name would imply, or as the aroma v\'hich sur- 
rounded certain of the Honorable Senator's votes 
on the " Cross- town," "Broadway," and other 
city -railroad operations in the lobbies of Albany. 
Thus run the lines, "suggested," as the author 
modestly remarks, "by Senator Strong's libel-suit 
against George C. Bennett, of the Broohlyn Times^ 
to prove himself an honest legislator." They are 
headed in the album of the Home of the Good 
Samaritan : 



REFRIGERATION INSTANTANEOUS ! 

All day the heat had been intense, 

No cloud obscured the burning ray, 
The air was sultry, close, and dense, 
And what we suffered, so immense 

That language never can portray ; 
When suddenly a coolness came 

As some one cried, that " Demas Strong 
Now purposed by the law to claim 
An honest legislator's name " — 

Our laughter brake forth loud and long I 
13 



290 HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 

And when again 'twas louder cried : 

" Strong brings a libel-suit to prove 
That never in corruption's tide 
Have his white hands been blackly dyed " — 

Cliill currents o'er us seemed to move 1 
No iceberg drifting toward the line 

Brings quicker chill to nearing ships; 
The coolness grew so keen and fine, 
'Twas piquant as some well-iced wine 

Of bubbling foam to tliirsty lips. 

" Let now thy servant part in peace, 

Oh! Lord," arose our humble prayer; 
For never till the years shall cease 
Can come a coolness like to this — 

So fresh, so pure and debonnair I 
But let the words not oft arise. 

For such the coolness they unfold, 
That, spoken oft, a woof of ice 
Seems to have seized us in a vice, 

And our souls perish in the cold ! 

Having quoted from so many editorial celebri- 
ties, we feel compelled to make room for the Hon. 
Henry J. Kaymond's charming little compliment 
to a Balmoral Skirt and the wearer thereof — each 
reader being only cautioned that the correct accen- 
tuation of the word " Balmoral " is on the penul- 
timate syllable "or," and not the ultimate "a^," 
as is the common, but erroneous, pronunciation in 
this country. In all of Euskin's essays on art there 
is nothing more absolutely perfect than the word- 



HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 291 

coloring of this picture. We ask every able- 
bodied reader on this side of fifty — is there ? 

THE BALMORAL SKIRT. 

Oh, contrast divine with the pale, saintly face, 

And the blue eyes that beam, now in mirth, now in dolor I 
Oh, G-arment that blends picturesqueness and grace, 

Suggesting sweet dreams full as warm as thy c dor 1 
Oh, feet flashing out from the roseate ring. 

Like doves from a sunset that crimsons behiad them I 
Oh, flame still attracting each moth on the wing 

To court the embrace which but dazzles to blind them 1 

As the pomegranate glistening, an apple of gold, 

Invites every tooth with its flesh to make issue, 
Yet contains richer coloring, fold within fold. 

And the nearer its heart so the warmer its tissue ; 
Thus, Laura, to me a pomegranate thou art. 

With thy rich golden hair and thy lips of red coral ; 
Yea ! the dreamy similitude startles the heart, 

When thy silken skirt raised shows the glowing " Balmo- 
ral." 

We shall conclude our extracts — confessing 
that some of the imputed Authorships may be 
erroneous, as we only judge by handwriting, and 
handwriting, as the negro said of the white man, 
is known to be "berry onsartain " — by giving 
one very undoubtedly from the pen of Private 
Miles O'Reilly, which, having made its first 



292 HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 

appearance in Mr. Stuart's album, has since been 
published in Hari^erh Weekly^ and extensively 
copied from that paper : 

NOT QUITE IN VAIN. 

How often in days of our sore distress, 
When we faint with an absolute weariness 

Of endless labor and endless pain. 
The sickening thoughts in our souls will rise, 
Clouding with gloom even the summer skies, 
And chilling the pulse and filling the eyes — 
' We have lived — we have lived in vain !" 

When hearts we thought golden and trusted best, 
Prove but shrivelling dross in the fiery test 

Which the Fates for all friendships ordain; 
As we turn the false picture with face to the wall. 
Or veil the lost idol with charity's pall, 
How cold on the soul seems the whisper to fall — 

" We hav£ lived — we have lived in vain I" 

When some prize of ambition, for years postponed, 
Is at length attained, yet we feel unatoned 

For the struggle that gave us the gain — 
Oh, spurning the dead-sea fruit we sought, 
*'Must it ever be thus?" is the weary thought. 
And again to our ear is the whisper brought — 

"We have lived — we have Hved in vain 1" - 

Oh, friends ! how rare in this workaday life 
Are the prizes, if won, that are worth the strife, 
The clangor, the dust, and the strain 1 



HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 293 

There is only one in the world below, 
But one, that, whatever its priee of woe, 
Bids the soul in the veins to exultingly know 
That we have not lived in vain. 

'Tis that moment unspeakable — best unsaid — 
When blushingiy downward the dear drooping head 

To our breast for the first time we strain ; 
And the promise is given, not in words, but in sighs, 
And the sweet humid tenderness filling her eyes — 
" Oh, soul of my soul, if my love be a prize. 
Then you have not hved in vain!" 

Miles O'Reilly. 

In salient contrast with the loving and eminent- 
ly human character of the preceding verses, are 
the subjoined quaint, tender, and pathetic stanzas 
in which Theodore Tilton of the Independent sets 
forth the longing of his soul for immortality, and 
pictures forth the kind of paradise to which his high- 
strung spirit so ardently aspires. Special attention 
is requested to the terse Saxon force with which this 
young but eminent theologian declares his wishes — 
no such complete mastery of brief expression being 
attainable by any one who had not thoroughly mas- 
tered and familiarized his mind with John Bunyan's 
Pilgrim! s Progress. We must all remember the 
striking view of a happy hereafter given by Charles 
Lamb when he stammered out, "I believe Heaven 
is a place where one lies on a sofa all day, and al- 
ways has new novels ;" but on comparing this unfi- 



29:1: HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 

nished picture with Mr. Tilton's niore elaborate 
sketch of the same thought, no reader, however 
dull, can fail to see in which direction the palm of 
merit should be awarded : 

MY PRIVATE HEAVEN. 

BY THEODORE TILTON. 

Well, talk of pleasures as you will, 

'Tis all a point of taste ; 
Some like to scrape, collect, and fill, 

Some like to spend and waste. 
Some choose in love's young smile to bask, 

Exchanging sigh and look ; 
But give to me — 'tis all I ask — 

My coffee, pipe, and book ! 

Some, led by fortune's fickle star, 

All seas and countries roam ; 
And some — I think the wisest far — 

Prefer to stay at home. 
Some love the angler's tedious task, 

The harmless fish to hook ; 
But give to me — 'tis all I ask — 

My coffee, pipe, and book. 

Some love to hunt with gun and hound, 

Some hunt for wealthy widows ; 
Some go geologizing round. 

Some botanize in meadows. 
Full many love to steal a kiss 

In some not public nook ; 
But give to me — 'tis all I ask — 

My coffee, pipe, and book. 



HOME OF THE HIGHER BOHEMIA. 295 

Yes! many men have many tricks, 

To make a pleasant living ; 
And Tom takes up with politics, 

While Dick does bolder thieving. 
Full many tastes to us are given, 

And each man's whim I brook ; 
But give me as my private Heaven, 

My coffee, pipe, and book ! 



EECOLLECTIOISrS OF THE WAR. 



CHAPTER I. 

Our advance upon Lexington was in four co- 
lumns — General Averell's cavalry on the extreme 
right; Crook's West Virginia infantry right cen- 
tre ; Sullivan's infantry left centre ; and Duffie's 
cavalry on the extreme left, having in fact wan- 
dered over to the east side of the Blue Ridge and 
there lost its way — as was the custom of its Gene- 
ral Commanding. 

The enemy, under General McCausland — who 
succeeded General Wm. B. Jones, killed at Pied- 
mont a few days before — fell back before our 
advance, but not without offering a vigorous 
opposition. The brigades of Imboden, Yaughan, 
Echolls, '' Mudwall " Jackson, Jones, McCausland, 
and a cloud of guerillas under Mosby, Gilmer, and 
McNeil, broke down all bridges in their rear, ob- 
structed the roads wherever feasible, and from 
every eminence played on the heads of our advanc- 
ing columns with their artillery, while also doing 
a large bushwhacking business from the dense 
woods through which we had to pass. 

But the weather was beautiful in that beautiful 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAE. 297 

valley, and our troops in the highest spirits. At 
Stanton we had sent back our prisoners, number- 
ing about thirteen hundred Confederate soldiers, 
and had dismissed some five or six hundred other 
prisoners — old men and mere boys belonging to 
the Eeserve Militia- — as not worth any further 
thought. We had also sent back all our spare 
transportation and stores not absolutely needed — 
the guard for this train consisting of one Ohio 
regiment of volunteers whose term of service had 
expired, two regiments of Ohio militia only called 
out for one hundred days, and a battalion of 
cavalry — ^the whole under command of Major- 
General Julius Stahl, who had been slightly 
wounded in the shoulder some few days before 
at Piedmont, while leading the last charge in 
which the rebels had been broken. Stahl's orders 
were, on his return, to collect all the troops he 
could at Martinsburgh — probably about five thou- 
sand — and then to follow after us with a train of 
extra ammunition and supplies. 

Never did an army advance through a lovelier 
country than was the Shenandoah Yalley between 
Stanton and Lexington in that soft month of June. 
Yast fields of purple and white clover gave ample 
and delicious pasturage to our cattle ; and from a 
pocket-book then carried, we extract the first 
stanza of a song commenced, but never finished — 
nor now ever likely to be : 
13* 



298 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

The meadows are thick with clover, 

Mottled the leaves and purple the flowers, 

And the clouds that trail heavily over 
The valley are big with showers. 

Occasionally light showers just freshened the 
atmosphere ; and the lofty peaks of the Blue 
Eidge on our left, clothed with foliage and ver- 
dure to their highest summits, looked lovely 
enough to deserve the pencil of Church or Bier- 
stadt. The country around showed no signs of 
war, save here and there, at advantageous points, 
some rail-fence rifle-pits thrown up by the enemy 
the night before, and from which they were conti- 
nually driven or outflanked by our advancing 
columns. 



THE PEOPLE. 

Up the Shenandoah to Harrisonburgh, the coun- 
try had been traversed and desolated in repeated 
campaigns — fields without fences, showing where 
armies had encamped ; desolate and fire-blackened 
stone chimneys, standing up like pillars to mark 
where happy homes had ceased to be ; long grave- 
trenches of red earth, recalling the legend that here 
Stonewall Jackson had whipped Banks, or Milroy, 
or given rude check to Fremont, or held his own 
and accomplished his purpose of retreat, despite 
the headlong fury of General Shields's attack. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 299 

Martinsburgh was a desolate and forsaken town, 
which had changed masters half a dozen times 
under the fluctuating fortunes of battle — soon to 
have two changes more. Winchester was much 
the same — aristocratic and bitterly rebellious — 
with vast earthworks and forts on the hills sur- 
rounding it, but utterly indefensible from the 
nature of the country in which it lay. At Stras- 
burg and Woodstock the people were sullenly 
silent as we passed through the streets — only 
some shrill-tongued females having the boldness 
to cry : 

*' We've seen men with your colored clothes go 
up this valley afore; and we've seen 'em come 
back this way a mighty sight faster than they 
went up." 

All the bridges from Cedar Creek to Kewmar- 
ket had been broken down by General Sigel, 
about ten or twelve days before our advance, in 
his headlong retreat from the latter place, fancy- 
ing himself pursued all the way by the victorious 
forces of General Breckinridge, who had really 
only followed him in force as far as Edinburgh — 
also a bitterly rebellious and much-scourged town, 
famous in the South for its manufacture of patent 
medicines. At Newmarket, or rather at Rood's 
Hill, on this side of it, we came on the shocking 
debris of the recent battle, many scores of our men 
being so imperfectly buried that their blackened 



300 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR, 

and wormy limbs protruded through the earth, 
while the air was horribly impregnated with the 
Bouquet de Rottenlioss — as "Porte Crayon" used 
to call the dead remains of our cavalry and artil- 
lery animals. 

ANECDOTE OF 

SIGEL. 

And here let me give a little story of " Porte 
Crayon," and then this digression shall termi- 
nate : 

It was after the battle of Newmarket, while 
Sigel was in headlong retreat down the Shenan- 
doah turnpike, that news reached his small and 
discomfited army of General Averell's success in 
destroying certain important railroads in South 
Western Virginia. 

" Oh ho !" said Colonel Strother (" Porte Cray- 
on "), who was then Sigel's chief of staff". " By 
Jove, boys ! the Department of West Virginia is 
doing a big business. General Averell's tearing 
up the railroad, and General Sigel's tearing down 
the 'pike!" 

To make the matter better, an innocent young 
staff ofi&cer tried to cheer his chopfallen General 
by repeating this story to him as " Porte Cray- 
on's" \2i^\> hon mot ; but the General couldn't see 
it in any such light. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAE. 801 

" By gar," lie exclaimed, " I vill not haaf beo- 
ples zayin' dem kind o' tings ! By gar, I pelief 
dere are beoples on mein staff who are not griefed 
to zee me dearin' down de 'pike ! By gar, Colonel 
Strodare must not zay dem kind o' tings, or he 
veel be court-martial !" 

Let me add, in justice to our Teutonic General, 
against whom this story rather tells, that Colonel 
Strother was at all times emphatic in speaking of 
the perfectly reckless manner in which General 
Sigel exposed himself and staff in the last hours 
of the battle of Newmarket — the gallant Colonel, 
now Adjutant-General of Virginia on Governor 
Pierpont's staff, equally asserting that there was 
no trace of cowardice in General Sigel, as there 
certainly was none of generalship. 

And now to return from our digression, and 
hasten on to Lexington as fast as possible. 

BATTLE OF PIEDMONT. — A BAD CASE OF WHIP. 

Quitting Harrisonburgh, which we had entered 
with only some inconsiderable skirmishing, we 
amused the enemy for a few days by some feints 
on their strong — indeed, nearly impregnable — 
lines at Mount Crawford, just in front of us; and 
then suddenly wheeling to the left — our move- 
ments covered by a cloud of cavalry, under the 
guidance of poor young Meigs of the Engineers, 



302 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

since killed, son of the Quartermaster- General — 
we crossed the Shenandoah at Port Eepublic on 
pontoons and by wading; and then found our- 
selves in a virgin part of the valley, which had 
never previously seen our uniforms except on 
prisoners being sent to Lynchburgh by Lee or 
Jackson. This was on the 4:th of June, 1864, — 
a miserable day, the rain pouring in torrents ; and 
well for us that it did so, as it helped to mislead 
the enem}^ 

Next morning, at daylight, commenced the bat- 
tle of Piedmont, or Stanton, as the enemy more 
properly called it — Stanton being the prize at 
which we aimed. The forces actually engaged 
were about equal. General Hunter having some 
nine thousand men actually in action, while the 
enemy had about the same — strongly posted, how- 
ever, on a range of hills, horse-shoe shaped, and 
heavily timbered, and further protected by rifle- 
pits and rail-fence barricades, hastily thrown up 
the night before. The rebel morning report of 
the day previous, found on the dead body of 
General Jones that afternoon, showed that he had 
then under him 6,800 regular Confederate sol- 
diers, while we knew that he was joined on the 
morning of the engagement by Yaughan's brigade 
from East Tennessee, and also by about fifteen 
hundred militia — old men and young boys, not 
worth the powder required to kill them — hurried 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 803 

forward from Stanton and Lynchburgli on news 
of our advance. 

The fight, though not large in numbers, was 
singularly obstinate and fluctuating, the enemy 
beating back repeated charges of our infantry and 
cavalry, under Generals Sullivan and Stahl — for 
neither the divisions of Crook and Averell had 
then joined us ; and it was quite late in the after- 
noon, after a long and sweltering day of battle, 
when the movement of the gallant Colonel Tho- 
burne's division across the narrow valley and its 
charge up hill upon the enemy's right flank, 
decided the contest in our favor. Greneral Wm. 
E. Jones, their commander, was killed, as also 
five colonels, thirty or forty officers, and some 
seven or eight hundred men killed or wounded ; 
and we had about eighteen hundred prisoners, 
including the worthless reserve militia, seventy 
regular oflfi.cers, and twenty-eight hundred stand 
of arms, as the spoils attesting our success. 
But for the coming on of night, and the broken, 
heavily-timbered nature of the country, the famous 
feat of "bagging" that army — so popular with 
Congressional orators and enthusiastic editors — 
might have been easily accomplished ; for a worse 
whipped or more utterly demoralized crowd of 
beaten men never fled from any field. 



304 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 



ALEXANDER H. H. STUART. — ONE LOYAL POLITI- 
CIAN IN VIRGINIA. 

Next day we entered Stanton without any regu- 
lar opposition, destroying the railroad thoroughly 
on each side of it, and also enormous quantities 
of quartermaster, commissary, and ordnance stores 
there accumulated ; and, riding into town, the 
first person the writer had any conversation with 
was the Hon. Alexander H. H. Stuart, once a Whig 
member of the Washington Cabinet, and now 
again becoming prominent in Virginia politics. 
He ;svas a handsome, portly, tall, middle-aged and 
gray-headed gentleman, a good deal resembling 
Mayor Berret, of Washington ; and one observa- 
tion that he made to us — indeed, almost the first 
— was memorable in that land of secession pro- 
clivities : 

We were sitting, with Mr. Stuart, the Mayor, 
County Clerk, and other dignitaries of the town, 
on the stoop of the Stanton Bank, when the head 
of our infantry column appeared, preceded by a 
band of music, playing " Hail Columbia," and an 
enormous banner of the Stars and Stripes, almost 
breaking the long pole — for there was a thunder- 
storm just then — on which the soldiers carried it. 

" That's a grand old tune," said Mr. Stuart, 
somewhat huskily, and with a slight quaver in his 
voice. " A grand old tune, and a grand old flag. 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 805 

It's long since I have seen tlie one, or "heard the 
other " — and he looked as if he were not sorry. 
It is but justice to Mr. Stuart to add, that he was 
one of those who had vehemently opposed the 
ordinance of secession, and was always regarded 
as being so much a Union man as it was safe for 
any one to be in those parts, during the entire 
rebellion. 

A SONG BY OUR IRREPRESSIBLE ORDERLY. 

While referring again to our field note-book for 
these particulars — hastily jotted down at the time, 
and jumbled up with all manner of army and 
private memoranda — we find in pencil, on the 
back of a rough morning report sent in by Gene- 
ral Sullivan, the following lines, hastily scribbled, 
and which we now publish for the first time, as 
some indication of the kind of thoughts with 
which the mind amuses itself and seeks relaxation 
in the midst of scenes like these. It is a soldier- 
song in verity — a song of the rank and file, rough 
and wholly unpolished ; but not, we think, with- 
out some true spirit of the camp in its hasty 
stanzas : 



806 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 



THE CANTEEN. 

BY PRIVATE MILES o'rEILLT. 

There are bonds of all sorts in this world of ours, 
Petters of friendship and ties of flowers, 

And true-lovers' knots, I ween ; 
The girl and the boy are bound by a kiss, 
But there's never a bond, old friend, like this — 

We have drunk from the same canteen I 



It was sometimes water, and sometimes milk, 
And sometimes apple-jack, fine as silk, 

But whatever the tipple has been, 
"We shared it together, in bane or bliss, 
And I warm to you, friend, when I think of this- 

We have drunk from the same canteen ! 



The rich and the great sit down to dine, 

And they quaff to each other in sparkhng wine, 

From glasses of crystal and green; 
But I guess in their golden potations they miss 
The warmth of regard to be found in this — 

We have drunk from the same canteen. 



We have shared our blankets and tents together. 
And have marched and fought in all kinds of weather, 

And hungry and full we have been ; 
Had days of battle and days of rest. 
But this memory I cling to and love the best — 

We have drunk from the same canteen { 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAK. 807 

For when wounded I lay on the outer slope, 
With my blood flowing fast, and but little hope 

Upon which my faint spirit could lean ; 
Oh, then, I remember, you crawled to my side, 
And, bleeding so fast, it seemed both must have died, 

We drank from the same canteen. 



MARCH FROM STANTON", AND CAPTURE OF LEX- 
INGTON. 

At Stanton we were soon joined by the infan- 
try division under General Crook, and the ca- 
valry under Greneral Averell; our force being 
thus raised — allowing for what we had to send 
back from here with the prisoners and trains — to 
an effective body of some twenty thousand men ; 
and it was with this force we were advancing 
against Lexington when this paper of "recollec- 
tions" opened. 

Our first day's march of twenty miles from 
Stanton brought us to a little hamlet variously 
styled Midway or Steele's Tavern ; and the next 
day's march, notwithstanding all the vehement 
though irregular opposition offered by McCaus- 
land, brought us b}'- noon on a hill overlooking 
the pretty city of Lexington. 

Here we found that McCausland was making 
what promised to be a resolute stand — the Lynch- 
burgh canal defending his right flank, while a 
branch of the Shenandoah river, sweeping round 



808 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

a higli perpendicular bluff of rock on which was 
situated the Lexington Military Institute, offered 
a serious barrier to our progress. The bridge by 
which he had crossed into the town was now a 
pile of smoking ruins, and all our efforts to find a 
ford or lay our pontoons were met with deter- 
mined opposition. From every house and emi- 
nence commanding the river and its approaches, 
and from the windows and grounds of the Mili- 
tary Institute, a close and deadly fire both of mus- 
ketry and artillery was kept up against us ; and 
it was not until late in the afternoon that McCaus- 
land abandoned this defence, finding his left flank 
in danger of being turned, and his retreat cut off 
by General Averell, who had found a ford some 
miles higher up and crossed with his cavalry. 

It thus came to pass that it was late that even- 
ing before we entered Lexington ; and now, before 
speaking of Stonewall Jackson's grave, let the 
writer be permitted a few words of explanation 
as to two acts committed at this place, for which 
Greneral Hunter has been most acrimoniously, 
and, as we shall prove, most senselessly and un- 
justly abused. We refer to the burning of Gov. 
Letcher's house and the Virginia Military Insti- 
tute. 4 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 809 



BURNING OF EX-GOVERNOR LETCHER'S HOUSE. 

The West Yirgioia troops, formingj with some 
regiments from Maryland, the elite of our little 
army, were furious beyond measure against John 
Letcher. He had been a Union man, they said, 
who had sold his principles for promotion in the 
rebel service ; and, as was the case with all apos- 
tates of this kind, had then signalized his devo- 
tion to his new faith by unheard-of oppressions 
and cruelties against all of his former associates 
who persisted in remaining faithful to their creed 
of loyalty. They charged against him gross and 
wanton outrages upon the liberties, lives, and pro- 
perty of all the loyal men within his reach ; and so 
strongly was their desire for retaliation manifested, 
that General Hunter, in order to protect the family 
of the fugitive ex-Governor, who had only fled 
the night before, directed that a guard of two 
companies from some Ohio regiment — the 116th, 
if we remember rightly — should be detailed for 
the security of Mr. Letcher's residence. Several 
officers of General Hunter's staff, also — of whom 
Captain Towne, chief signal officer, was one, and 
Captain Prendergast, since killed, another — took 
up their quarters with the Letchers — partly as it 
was a pleasant, though small and rather modest 
mansion ; and partly to give additional protection 
to the frightened family of females — ex-Governor 



310 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

LetcTier having fled the night previous to our 
entrance. 

Thus matters stood until next day, when some 
soldiers of the 9th West Virginia, under Colonel — 
now G-eneral — Duvall, happened to find in an 
abandoned printing-office, already half set up in 
type — the manuscript in John Letcher's hand, 
and over his signature, of a proclamation to the 
citizens of " Rockbridge and other Counties," call- 
ing upon them to " arise and slay the foul Yankee 
invader ;" and if unable to offer any organized re- 
sistance, then from behind every tree and stone in 
the valley, to kill us as they could. It was, in other 
words, a direct incitation to bushwhacking and 
murder ; and if Mr. John Letcher had been caught, 
not only would his house have been burned — as 
the houses of four other bushwhackers, and only 
four, had previously been — but he would have 
been hung on the first tree with a little paper 
pinned on his breast bearing this brief but preg- 
nant legend : 

" Hung for organizing bushwhacking. 

" By command of Maj.-G-en. Hunter." 

What folly and something worse it is, while 
General Sherman goes blameless for having burned 
down whole towns and cities that offered any 
resistance, to censure Hunter for his course in this 
valley campaign, wherein — at least, so far as we 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 811 

have knowledge — he only caused five private 
dwellings to be destroyed, and these on conviction 
that the proprietors were assassins and bush- 
whackers ! 



BURNING OF THE VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE. 

As to the cry raised against " Uncle David " for 
the destruction of the Virginia Military Institute, 
that is still, if possible, more senseless and unjust. 
General Smith, commanding the Institute, as we 
have good evidence, protested to General McCaus- 
land against defending Lexington, and more espe- 
cially against using the Institute as one of the 
points of defence — stating the town to be wholly 
indefensible, in his judgment, and that it would 
be made liable to bombardment and destruction 
by such a course ; and especially pleading that to 
fire from the windows of the Institute on our 
troops, or to use it in any manner as a military 
point, would likewise, and still more strongly, 
necessitate its destruction. 

To this McCausland replied by showing his 
orders from General Lee, which were to contest 
every mile of our advance with the utmost obsti- 
nacy, every hour gained against us being impor- 
tant, as the division of Breckinridge and the 
corps of Ewell under General Jubal Early, were 
then hastening forward by rail from Richmond to 



812 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

his relief. General Smith, as we have heard, still 
maintained that using the Military Institute (ot 
which, by the way, Yaughan, Imboden, McCaus- 
land, and nearly all the other Virginia leaders of 
prominence had been graduates,) could do no 
good, but would certainly result in its destruction ; " 
and finally, when McCausland persisted in his 
course, General Smith asked to be relieved from 
service under him, and marched away with his 
cadets down the canal tow-path to Lynchburgh. 

As to the order of General Lee, we are certain 
— the original telegram having been captured 
next day in the house of General Smith, at which 
McCausland and the other generals had stopped 
over-night ; and as to General Smith's protest and 
subsequent action in the matter, they were rekted 
to us next morning by a very intelligent and 
respectable old black man — General Smith's butler 
or steward — to whom we were indebted for many 
comfortable meals during the next two days. 

This Institute, at the burning of which the 
writer looked with feelings of inexpressible regret 
though fully satisfied of the justice of the act, 
was an exact copy of the West Point Academy in 
architecture, and perhaps more handsome — cer- 
tainly more modern, elegant and commodious in 
the houses of its professors, of whom the great 
Stonewall Jackson had been one. The more 
valuable books of its library, however, and instru- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 313 

ments of its scientific, astronomical, and chemical 
departments, had been removed before our advent. 
It contained large quantities of arms and ordnance 
stores, and it must be remembered that its stu- 
dents had been organized into a battalion of infan- 
try and had fought against us, not many days 
before, at Newmarket. On its roll of graduates, 
too, could be found the names of hundreds of 
prominent rebel officers ; and this, en parenihese^ 
opened our eyes to comprehend how it came to 
pass that the South had such good officers uni- 
formly on the breaking out of the war, while ours, 
except the regulars from West Point, were then 
so ignorant — nearly all the young aristocracy of 
the South having been trained to arms in just 
such institutions as this of Lexington, Baton 
Eouge, and so forth. This burning took place on 
the 12th of June, 1864. 



STONEWALL JACKSON'S GRAVE AND ITS PECU- 
LIAR MONUMENT. 

And now for a visit to Stonewall Jackson's 
grave — Jackson who has always impressed us as 
one of the most veritable heroes of these degene- 
rate days. We know not who wrote that magni- 
ficent soldier-lyric in his honor, entitled " Stone- 
wall Jackson's Way ; " but do know, despite its 
roughness, that it is ore of the grandest tributes 
14 



814 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

ever paid by the Muse to the character of a Hero. 
It is fiery, and loving, and droll, and full of pathos 
— a song for the full appreciation of which, per- 
haps, one should have made a campaign or two in 
the Shenandoah, and beheld all the monuments 
of his genius. " Ah," said an old rebel prisoner 
to us once, when we asked him which of their 
generals he had most faith in : " Ah, Colonel ! 
Johnsing we guess to be the retreatin'est general 
we ever had ; but the grittiest and the flankin'est 
was Stonewall Jackson." 

The churchyard in which poor Stonewall lies is 
just on the borders of the town, and must have 
been a pretty and neat little place of burial before 
the war. It has heavy borders of moss roses and 
the dark roses of the South along its walks, and 
these were in richest bloom when we paid our 
visit. Beautiful white marble monuments are 
scattered around in profusion ; but looking at 
their dates it will be seen that few of these have 
been erected since the breaking out of the rebel- 
lion. Death has been since then too busy in the 
South to receive such honors ; and the long, close 
rows of freshly-made graves — more especially 
those of a dozen young cadets killed at New- 
market — had no other trophy or memorial than a 
small shingle at the head of each, bearing a brief 
and rudely painted inscription. 

Exactly in the centre of the churchyard is the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 815 

grave of tlie great rebel leader — a little bank of 
earth sodded over with green clover, and with two 
little dark boards (now probably chipped away by 
relic-hunters) at its head and foot. Near to its 
head, also, a tall pine flag-staff sprang nakedly up 
into the air ; and on this, until carried away by 
McCausland in his retreat, had waved a Confede- 
rate battle-flag, worked in threads of silk, and 
gold, and silver, by certain secession-sympathizing 
peeresses of England — the Countess of Arundel 
and Surrey, if we remember rightly, having been 
prominent in the work. This battle-flag, with a 
sentry in gray walking up and down beneath it, 
had formed Stonewall Jackson's only monument ; 
and now both had disappeared ! 

Suppose McCausland had left both sentry and 
flag on guard by that solitary grave, who believes 
that either would have been disturbed ? Would 
not both have been held sacred as portions of the 
tomb of a good and gallant soldier ? At any rate 
this thing is very sure : that, if either or both had 
to be taken away, the writer would have striven 
hard to shirk in his own person that particular 
tour of duty ; and this feeling, so far as he could 
ascertain, was unanimous amongst all his younger 
associates. 

Just in rear of the flag-staff were two handsome 
white marble tombs enclosed within an iron rail- 
ing — one sacred to the memory of the wife, and 



816 BECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

the other to that of a beloved child of " Professor 
T. J. Jackson of the Yirginia Military Institute." 
Doubtless had the rebellion prospered, a splendid 
tomb would in time have arisen to Jackson's me- 
mory ; and, even as things are — so catholic is the 
admiration which valor rouses — we would gladly 
contribute our mite towards the erection of some 
substantial memento to the great Genius — as Gene- 
ral Lee was the great Respectability — of the 
Southern war. 

Let it not harm us in the esteem of our friends 
of the Loyal League if we confess the weakness 
of having pulled some dark roses of the South and 
strewed them on Jackson's grave, taking away in 
return — reverently and with uncovered heads — 
some few blades of clover which we have still 
preserved in a locket as one of the war's most 
precious relics, — our flagrant " treason " in this 
act having been shared at the time by an officer 
of far higher position, whose name as a cavalry 
leader on the Union side was then a terror through- 
out the Shenandoah and Kanawha valleys. 



ODD TOMB OF AN ECCENTRIC OLD LADY. 

It is when we feel most grave and sentimental 
that a sudden presentation of any ludicrous thought 
or object becomes most irresistible to the nerves 
of laughter ; and of this we had an illustration on 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 817 

letting our eyes rest for a moment upon tlie tomb 
of an old lady whose remains are deposited pre- 
cisely opposite Stonewall Jackson's feet. This 
tomb is a square house of granite, probably ten or 
twelve feet square ; and into its door- way this 
eccentric old dame — a Mrs. Hammond or Ham- 
mel, we think — had caused the hall-door of her 
house, painted green, with her name regularly 
engraved on a brass plate, and with a brass han- 
dle, a brass keyhole, and a brass bell-handle in 
the adjacent wall, to be inserted ; so that it just 
looked as if we had nothing to do but pull the 
bell and ask was the defunct occupant witliin. 
No tomb more quietly ludicrous have we ever 
seen ; and though it shocked us to laugh in the 
vicinity of Jackson's grave, we could not but 
laugh heartily in spite of all our efforts to be 
serious. 



-IMPORTANCE OF THIS 
RAID. 

As to what were Greneral Grant's orders in this 
campaign, contrasted with what were General 
Hunter's acts, we find our space already so largely 
occupied by this hurried memoir, that we must 
hold over their consideration for another article ; 
in which will also be given the two days of battle 
before Lynchburgh, with the engagements of 



318 KECOLLECTIONS OF TFE WAR. 

Liberty, Salem, and the retreat across the Alle- 
ghanies and up the Kanawha valley, terminating 
at Gauley Bridge. Of this raid — so much mis- 
understood by the public, for the reason that we 
had cut loose from communications, and the only 
reports that were heard of our " miscreancies " 
reached the Korth through the Lynchburgh and 
Kichmond rebel papers — it must suffice for this 
chapter to say : that General Grant has borne his 
official testimony to its being, in his judgment, 
the greatest, most daring, and most ably conducted 
raid of the war up to that time, and the most 
important in its results. Hunter's only fault was 
that his tender and noble heart did not allow him 
to execute one- tenth part of the severity of his 
orders ; but of this in full hereafter. Let us also 
add that it has now been ascertained that General 
Lee, at the time of this raid, had set apart 35,000 
picked men under General Early to hurry for- 
ward to reinforce Johnson, who was then facing 
Sherman opposite Atlanta, with nearly balanced 
forces ; and that, had those reinforcements reached 
Johnson at that time, Sherman might have fared 
ill in the retreat he would have been compelled to 
undertake towards Nashville. It was Hunter's 
success in the Yalley, which was Lee's arsenal and 
granary, that compelled Early with his men to be 
sent to save Lynchburgh ; and thus it was, and 
thus only, that Sherman was enabled to carry out 



RECOLLECTION'S OF THE WAR. 319 

his superb strategetical conception of the march 
from Atlanta through the bowels of the Confe- 
deracy. 

CHAPTER II. 

CAUSE OF THE HALT AT LEXINGTON. — SHERIDAN 
EXPECTED. 

Hunter's raiding party of about eighteen thou- 
sand effective men entered Lexington on the even- 
ing of the 11th of June last year, and remained 
theise until the morning of the 14th — a delay for 
which the General has been blamed in certain 
quarters. This blame, of course, makes no differ- 
ence, as had he not been censured for this — it 
being then the fashion to abuse himr— his candid 
accusers would readily have found some other 
source of accusation. 

For the delay, however, there were many valid 
and peremptory reasons — General Duffie's cavalry 
column of about three thousand men, detached at 
Stanton and sent across the Blue Kidge to cut 
the railroad between Amherst Court- House and 
Lynchburgh, having lost its way in the moun- 
tains, as was usual with its leader, and not rejoin- 
ing the main command at Lexington until late in 
the evening of the 13th. This expedition had not 
been successful, only slightly damaging the rail- 
road, capturing three hundred wagons and teams, 



320 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

and taking some seventy or eighty prisoners. It 
brought news, however, that Sheridan had had a 
heavy fight with Fitz-Hugh Lee's cavalry at Char- 
lottesville some two or three days before; and 
herein — that we were waiting for Duffie — lies a 
partial explanation of our delay at a juncture so 
critical. Cut off from our communications, and 
hearing only through Kichmond papers and con- 
trabands of Sheridan's march toward Charlottes- 
ville, Hunter naturally, and we believe rightly, 
supposed that Sheridan was attempting to join 
his expedition against Lynchburgh ; and it was 
partly to await his arrival, and partly to give 
time for Dufl&e's cavalry to rejoin us, that the halt 
in question had been made. 



REASONS FOR A NON-DIRECT ADVANCE. 

But there were yet other and manifold reasons 
for the delay. From our central position while at 
Lexington, the enemy were puzzled to guess in 
what direction would be our next advance — whe- 
ther still directly up the valley against Lynch- 
burgh, or across the Blue Kidge to Charlottesville, 
and from thence across country to join General 
Grant, destroying all the railroads connecting 
Lynchburgh with Eichmond on our line of march. 
It was also requisite at this point to still further 
strip the army of all superfluous stores and equip- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 821 

ments, placing it in the lightest marching order, 
as we were substantially with a railroad terminus 
in front of us at Lynchburgh, and another in our 
rear at Rock Fish Gap ; so that if General Grant 
had been repulsed, of which we heard many and 
curiously circumstantial accounts, General Lee 
could in twenty-four hours have enveloped us with 
veteran forces more numerous than our own, in 
addition to the troops we were already contending 
with — and the forces thus united would be in com- 
munication with their base, while we were wholly 
cut off from ours, and already beginning to run 
short of everything which our foraging parties 
could not hunt up and bring in from the sur- 
rounding country. 

For these considerations, and in order to destroy 
the enormous branch of the Tredegar Iron Works, 
then in full activity at Buchanan, General Hunter 
decided not to move directly up the valley against 
Lynchburgh, but to cross the James at Buchanan, 
thence strike for the town of Liberty on the Vir- 
ginia and East Tennessee railroad, and so approach 
Lynchburgh on the south-west side, which was 
reported to be the side least heavily fortified. 
This would still keep open to us, if unsuccessful 
before our objective point, or forced to withdraw 
under pressure of superior numbers, two lines of 
retreat : one northward across the Alleghanies, and 
via the Kanawha to Parkersburgh on the Ohio ; 
14* 



822 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

the otlier towards East Tennessee, destroying the 
great salt works near Salem, of such vital import- 
ance to the rebels, as we passed. To retreat down 
the Shenandoah from Lynchburgh, as we had 
come up, would have been simply absurd and im- 
possible—the country being thoroughly eaten out, 
for one reason, and the railroad on the east side of 
the Blue Kidge, running from Lynchburgh to 
Waynesboro', offering to whatever force might be 
able to repulse us the means of intercepting our 
retreat in the strong positions afforded by Stanton 
and its surroundina: hills and earthworks. 



BUCHANAN AND ITS FOUNDRIES. 

Starting from Lexington on the morning of the 
14th, and driving the routed valley-forces easily 
before us, we entered Buchanan that evening, and 
had much trouble in saving the town from a con- 
flagration which McCausland's retreating and 
demoralized forces had left behind them as a sou- 
venir. Here a vast branch of the Tredegar L'on 
Works, owned by Gen. Anderson, together with 
many other furnaces and foundries casting shot, 
shell, and ordnance for General Lee, was de- 
stroyed ; and next day, though with severe diffi- 
culties, and at a great expense of pioneering labor 
and bush-fighting, our column crossed the Blue 
Eidcre between the shadows of the Peaks of Otter 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 823 

— the narrow road over which we trailed in ser- 
pent-fashion looking down continually over pre- 
cipices of from five to fifteen hundred feet in 
depth, while immediately above us towered the 
highest and sharpest of the Otter peaks— forming 
the loftiest point of the Blue Eidge Kange — clothed 
with dense timber and undergrowth to within some 
two hundred feet of its topmost pinnacle. 

At Buchanan we captured, amongst other pri- 
soners, Colonel Angus McDonald, formerly of the 
Union army — a cruel and hoary-headed rebel com- 
missary, who had caused the death of Colonel 
Strother's father by arresting that gallant old 
patriot for his avowed Unionism, and casting him 
— an old man over seventy years of age, with 
whom his tormentor had previously held most 
friendly social relations — into a dark cellar-cell in 
the common jail of Martinsburg, there to languish 
on damp straw for a few days, until death put an 
end to his life and miseries together. " I can only 
regret my civilization," said the Colonel, when 
the capture of this miscreant was announced. 
" Just for this one morning, Miles, I should like 
to be a Camanche or Sioux Indian, and have their 
privilege of vengeance." Not being a Camanche 
but a gentleman, however, he took no other notice 
of the prisoner than to see that he was no better 
and no worse treated than his fellow-captives of 
hisrher and lower rank. 

o 



324: RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 



THE BLUE RIDGE AND ITS BEAUTIES. 

From the peaks of Otter the view over "the 
Piedmont of Virginia," as it is called, can nowhere 
be surpassed on this continent — perhaps not in the 
world. The lessening hills of the Blue Kidge, 
with many a lovely valley and brawling stream 
between, roll downward from our feet in woody 
and billowy undulations, ever diminishing until 
they merge and fade away in the noble champagne 
country beyond, dotted with still handsome villas 
and farm-houses that were both happy and pros- 
perous before the war. 

In our upward march that day the obstructions 
left behind by the enemy had been of the most 
annoying nature. At every five hundred yards a 
few strokes of the axe would drop enormous trees 
across the narrow road, scarcely wide enough to 
prop both wheels of a wagon ; while at turning- 
points, or other places offering natural facilities 
for such work, this narrow and precipice-sided 
causeway would be either cut away altogether or 
blown up with gunpowder, leaving us no alterna- 
tive but to rebuild the same before proceeding. 
It was not without severe bushwhacking and the 
loss of many wagons and ambulances that this 
march was accomplished — the mules and horses 
frequently becoming restive, either from harness- 
chafing or some other irritant ; and in such cases, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 325 

where the drivers were not particularly nimble 
and steady, wagon and mules, or ambulances and 
horses, would go crashing down over the yawning 
chasms on our left, until either shattered and 
stopped against some trees, or rent into insignifi- 
cant fragments by the downward process of at- 
trition. 

Despite all these annoyances, however, the view 
from the signal-station overlooking the Piedmont 
of Yirginia was one that can never fade from 
recollection. Beautiful little farms in the vales 
between the spurs of the hills, nestling beneath 
us in frightened silence — so many doves with the 
hawks swooping in circles over their helpless 
heads. Beautiful sunlight patches floating over 
the massive and varying verdures of the moun- 
tains ; clear springs bubbling out from beneath 
every moss-grown rock; rich flowers shedding 
brilliancy and perfume even from the topmost 
cliffs ; and dense woods of unmatchable shadow 
and stateliest growth giving the coolness and 
repose of perpetual twilight, even in the noon 
and glare of that toilsome summer day. 

PREFACE TO A SKETCH. 

And now, before describing our descent on the 
Yirginia and Tennessee railroad at Liberty ; the 
two days of engagement in front of Lynchburg ; 



826 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

the subsequent actions at Liberty and Salem, and 
the arduous withdrawal of our nearly starving 
and ammunitionless forces across the sterile tract of 
the Catawba and other mountain ranges of the 
Alleghanies, our route leading us through the 
famous Sweet, and White, and Red Sulphur 
Springs of the Kanawha, and past the Hawk's 
Nest, that loveliest and most unique of all the 
views in this region of rugged beauty — perhaps 
the writer may be pardoned a digression in order 
to answer the many inquiries that have from time 
to time been addressed to him in regard to the 
character and calibre of the remarkable officer 
who was the leader and supporting strength of 
this daring and most exhaustive expedition — 
his inflexible will seeming to supply continued 
energy and endurance to his whole command, and 
his soldiers being cheered by witnessing a veteran 
of sixty sharing aU their privations, under- 
going more than their share of labors, and appa- 
rently becoming fresher, hardier, and more light- 
spirited the more our prospects darkened, and the 
more lofty and unending appeared the hills we 
had to cross before either food or respite could be 
gained. 

It is of Gen. David Hunter the writer desires to 
say some few words — words, indeed, essential to 
a full comprehension of this hurried narrative, 
and also designed to quiet the many of his Demo- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 827 

cratic friends who continually do cry, but not like 
the Seraphim and Cherubim : " What could you 
have seen in such a leader to excite your admi- 
ration ? And why do you embarrass yourself by 
supporting one against whom so large a part of 
the public stand arrayed, either from judgment 
or prejudice?" 

GENERAL DAVID HUNTER. — WHO HE IS AND 
WHAT? 

To the questions thus roughly embodied, we 
now answer collectively and in writing, as we 
have grown weary of answering verbally and 
separately, that in our whole experience of human 
nature — and it has been considerably varied — the 
purest, gentlest, bravest, and most honest gentle- 
man we have ever had the means of knowing 
thoroughly, is the officer in question. Too fear- 
less and sincere to be politic — too warm to be 
always wise — too innately noble and truthful to 
be what is called " successful " in these miserable 
latter-days of intrigue and fraud — David Hunter 
yet lives in our memory, and must while memory 
lasts, as a character so free from any vice, so 
incapable of any baseness, that we have often 
thought four years of life not wasted, if only for 
enabling us by their experience to realize that 
such a manhood as his was yet possible in this 
soiled and dusty world. 



828 RECOLLECTIOlSrS OF THE WAR. 

" Hunter is the noblest of all noble fellows," 
remarked Fleet- Captain Eamon Rogers one day 
(during an interview, bj the way, in which he 
and the writer were endeavoring to prevent a 
personal collision between Admiral Du Pont and 
"Uncle David" — both of sensitive and choleric 
tempers). " He is both gentle and fierce," conti- 
nued Rogers, "if you can reconcile that contra- 
diction of terms ; and there can be no finer mettle 
for any soldier." Of course, with this spirit on 
the part of the officer representing Du Pont, and 
an equally sincere admiration of the Admiral on 
the part of the officer representing Hunter, nego- 
tiations on the point of difficulty were quickly 
adjusted ; and thus the only breeze that ever 
ruffled, or even threatened to ruffle, the otherwise 
invariably pleasant relations of Army headquar- 
ters and the Kavy flag-ship in the Department 
of the South, faded away, leaving the surface of 
conjoint operations as bright and cloudless as 
before. 

General Hunter is a soldier — not a politician, 
not a writer, not a controversialist, not a lawyer ; 
and as a soldier should be judged. He served 
over thirty years, in the saddle and on the fron- 
tier, as captain of dragoons ; nor is there an In- 
dian tribe from the Canadian line to Mexico that 
has not its own stories of his rule, and with whose 
habits and temperament he is not familior. He 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 829 

was in command of Fort Leavenwortli and the 
Indian Territories nearly forty years ago ; served 
on the staff of General Taylor as chief paymaster, 
and was his confidential oflScer during the whole 
Mexican war; fought several duels during his 
first year in the army, and was once dismissed for 
having challenged his superior officer, Colonel 
Snelling — being subsequently restored to the ser- 
vice by President Adams, in an order of high 
compliment, very damaging to Colonel Snelling, 
and one of the most remarkable General Orders 
ever seen. Jefferson Davis served many years 
under him as Adjutant of the First Dragoons, 
while Hunter was Captain commanding; and 
" Black David Hunter," as his West Point com- 
panions called him from boyhood, and General 
Nathaniel Lyon, were about the only two avowed 
anti-slavery officers in the army previous to the 
breaking out of the late rebellion. Both had 
gone to Kansas as tolerators, if not supporters of 
slavery ; and both had been there converted to 
the anti-slavery faith by witnessing the atrocities 
of the Border Euffians from Platte and Doniphan 
counties in Missouri, the frauds of Sheriff " Can- 
dlebox " Calhoun, and the open prostitution of 
all President Pierce's and Buchanan's power to 
coerce the reluctant residents of that Territory to 
accept a slaveholding constitution. 

In appearance and physique. General Hunter 



830 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

is a most remarkable illustration of how far and 
how long the good habits of a lifetime can pre- 
serve high spirits, virility, and vigor. Standing 
about five feet eight inches high, his shoulders are 
broad and powerful, his chest deep, and his limbs 
still sinewy and active. Swarthy and Indian-like 
both in complexion and of feature, his grey eyes 
dilate into blackness and brilliancy under excite- 
ment ; his nostrils expand, while his lips are com- 
pressed tightly together under their curling mous- 
tache ; and, taking him for all in all — not for- 
getting his perfect horsemanship — if there be any 
finer ideal of a veteran soldier the writer has 
never seen it, not even excepting Generals 
Hooker, Sheridan, or Hancock. 

Not a Puritan, though of deeply religious 
convictions ; not a strait-laced nor jaundiced 
moralist in judging those faults in others from 
which he has been free himself; one to whose 
lips a single phrase of profanity is as impossible 
as one of falsehood ; one whose still white and 
perfect teeth give evidence of a stomach never 
disarranged by strong potations, a mouth never 
misused as a receptacle for tobacco or its fumes ; 
able to share and even enjoy the roughest food 
and severest privations of the humblest private 
soldier under his command, although noted in 
civilized life for good-living and a generous hos- 
pitality ; a pliant wrist for the sabre exercise, a 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAE. 831 

steady finger on the trigger ; eyes of the farthest 
and keenest vision after sixty years of use 
that we have ever known ; a heart overflowing 
with kindliness, though liable to sudden fits of 
rage ; always with a tendency to side with the 
'' under-dog " in every fight, — misfortune and 
helplessness appearing to have the same attrac- 
tions for his chivalrous nature that success and 
strength have for men of more worldly and pru- 
dent characters ; endowed with an utter scorn of 
expediency, when opposed to his convictions of 
principle ; and with a pride of character which 
can neither be purchased, bullied, nor cajoled into 
anything which his judgment or prejudice may 
regard as of questionable integrity, — such is 
Major-Greneral David Hunter, as he was revealed 
to us in personal relationship and by correspond- 
ence, during a vicarious but most intimate asso- 
ciation of over three years — the writer during 
about one-half of that time serving on his staff, 
and when not so serving, but on the staffs of 
other generals, being in the receipt of frequent 
and confidential letters from his old commander. 

This eulogy is warm — the warmest and most 
unreserved we have ever written — the roseate ink 
of hero-worship not often suiting the hard and 
angular steel pens with which faithful verbo- 
graphs have to be drawn in this practical and 
unromantic age. That " Uncle David " has many 



332 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

opinions wholly opposed to our own is quite suffi- 
ciently known ; that he, for example, particularly 
disliked and distrusted McClellan, for whom the 
writer is proud to say he voted ; as also that he is 
to-day in favor of extending the right of suffrage 
to every negro of the South, and disfranchising 
every white man in the least degree prominent on 
the rebel side — two points with neither of which 
the writer can agree. 

There are, however, so many to find fault with 
this well-abused gentleman, and they appear to do 
their work so heartily, that we feel the darker 
side of his picture stands in no need of further 
shadowing from our hands; while, should any 
excuse be needed for the unrestrained and fervent 
admiration seeking brief embodiment in this hur- 
ried sketch, let it be found in the fact that the cha- 
racter of a loved and honored friend — the most 
absolutely pure gentleman of our entire acquaint- 
ance — has been made systematically the prey 
either of Southern traitors, or the meaner class of 
their Northern allies, seeking expression for their 
hatred of the Union by abusing one of the Union's 
most fervent, if not always wisest, champions; 
as also by the time-serviDg, vacillating, cowardly, 
corrupt, and shuffling elements of the Eepublican 
party, ever as ready to surrender any honest leader 
whose strides may have outstripped immediate 
party- expediency, as they subsequently were to 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 883 

adopt the inspirations of his honest genius, and to 
claim credit for having originated those very ideas 
for the first announcement of which the true 
author had been both rebuked and punished. 

We claim for Hunter that the most vital and 
conquering ideas of our late struggle had their 
origin in his tent, and that every forward step of 
our Government was but an acceptance — often 
slow and semi-reluctant — of some point of policy 
for which, on its first promulgation, said govern- 
ment had officially reprimanded its author. Hun- 
ter first armed and organized negro troops. His 
conduct was disapproved and his experimental 
regiment disbanded without the pay of soldiers. 
But we have had in the service since then not less 
than two hundred thousand black men. Hunter 
declared that slavery — only existing by civil and 
municipal law — was "incompatible with martial 
law," and that slavery^ therefore, must cease in all 
parts of Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida 
within the lines of his command. This order was 
immediately and publicly revoked by President 
Lincoln ; and yet within a month after its recall, 
out came the first Decree of Emancipation, cover- 
ing not only the three States named, but the en- 
tire South, with an announcement of the self-same 
principle ! 

General Hunter, too, was the first to declare 
that rebels conld have no rights of property which 



334 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

loyal men were bound to respect, and that our 
armies should subsist, free of charge, upon any 
country through which they passed. For this, 
though never officially rebuked, he was for a long 
time held up to public odium — all the rebel and 
rebel-sympathizing press denouncing him as a 
"barbarian;" while but few of the Kepublic^n 
journals had the courage or good heart to say ten 
manly words in defence of our ablest champion. 
The same journals, however, " saw a great light" 
some short time after, when the Confiscation Bill 
passed both Houses of Congress and received the 
Presidential signature. 

Lastly, let us say, it was Hunter who introduced 
and pressed upon the authorities the importance 
of vast raids through the interior of the Confede- 
racy, in lieu of that other policy of attacking the 
rebels in their strongholds and precisely where 
they invited and dared us to assault their works ; 
and here, without wishing to take a leaf from 
Sherman's nobly-earned chaplet, let us only re- 
mark, in conclusion, that a programme similar to 
William Tecumseh's mighty raid from the south- 
west to the Atlantic was in the hands of the Hon. 
Secretary of War at least one year before Sherman 
undertook or even proposed it — its first proposer 
having been General David Hunter, and his only 
request in connexion therewith, that he might be 
allowed to make the experiment, of which he even 



KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 335 

then foretold — as if endowed with prophecy — 
the magnificent and all but bloodless success that 
must immediately follow. 

And now, are our many anxious Democratic 
friends, who have occasionally hinted that Hunter 
must have given us "love-powders," any better 
satisfied? Or can they now any more clearly 
understand why and how it is, that — without any 
effort " to fight an unpopular man into popular- 
ity" — we refuse either to give up or conceal our 
deep and heartfelt admiration of the very noblest 
and purest gentleman upon whose aspect we have 
looked since the coffin-lid was shut down over 
the cold face and straightened limbs of a father 
who sleeps his last sleep under the green turf and 
pleasant dews of an Irish hillside ? 

CHAPTER III. 

THE SOUTHERN" GUERILLAS. — REALITY VS, 
ROMANCE. 

From the Peaks of Otter, through Fancy Farm 
to Liberty, our march was substantially unop- 
posed, only McCausland's rear-guard of guerillas 
under Mosby, Grilmer, and McNeil, and some 
scattering squadrons of Imboden's cavalry offer- 
ing any resistance ; and these were quickly over- 
come — in fact, never amounted to enough to retard 
our movements. And here, perhaps, some few 



336 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

words relative to tliose famed guerillas of the Vir- 
ginia valleys may not be out of place. 

It was the fashion in secession circles, down to 
the very closing of the rebellion, to magnify these 
free-lances of the Southern cause into little less 
than chivalric paladins, or knights-errant, all 
mounted upon high-mettled chargers gorgeously 
caparisoned, their persons sumptuously clothed 
from the spoils of a hundred forays, their swords 
glittering and their revolvers infallible ; all heroes 
sans peur et sans reproche^ and each not only able 
and eager to whip, but constantly in the habit of 
whipping, from ten to a dozen of our lN"orthern 
mud-sills in open fight. 

We have so few pleasant illusions left in con- 
nexion with the late war, that nothing but a 
strong sense of the reverence due to the truth of 
history could induce us to give another side to this 
picture, and paint these guerillas, both as they fell 
under our own observation and as they were uni- 
formly described to us by scores of officers who 
had served for years against them in the Shenan- 
doah and Kanawha valleys. Those Maryland 
ladies of secession sympathies, therefore, who 
crowned the "Noble Mosby" and "Brave Harry 
Gilmer" with flowers, while the followers of those 
illustrious chiefs were rifling trunks and picking 
pockets on the train between Baltimore and Wash- 
ington, had better, perhaps, for their own peace 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAK. 837 

of mind, skip the following paragraph; as we 
mean it to be the simple truth told in language as 
plain as common decency and the respect due to 
vanquished foes will permit. 

These guerillas, then, we say, as they appeared 
in fact, and not in the rhapsodical letters of such 
correspondents as " Druid," of the World, were 
about the filthiest, drunkenest, meanest, most ill- 
looking, ragged, mutinous, diseased, undisciplined, 
lousy, and utterly cowardly gang of horse and 
chicken-thieves, highway robbers, grand and petty 
larcenists, that the Lord, for some inscrutable pur- 
pose — probably to punish rebellion by a stick of 
its own growth and cutting — ever permitted to 
disgrace the noble calling of the soldier, or the 
fair surface of American soil, to which neither 
thieves nor cowards appear indigenous in any 
extended degree. They were terrible, indeed, to 
the stampeded muleteers, sutlers, and camp-fol- 
lowers of some unprotected train ; but still more 
terrible to the wretched residents of their own 
section in the regions through which they ope- 
rated. 

As to standing up in fair fight, however, before 
any body of our troops, well-officered and even 
half so numerous as themselves, the thing was out 
of the question, and they never tried it. K a 
report came in that Mosby, or Gihner, or McNeil 
were hidden at any gap in the mountains, waiting 
15 



838 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

for our troops to pass that they might swocp down 
without fear of molestation on our exposed train 
and sutler- wagons, the orders given to the famous 
Captain Blazer of "West Virginia; or Captain 
Prendergast (since killed), of the 1st New York 
cavalry ; or Major Timothy Quinn, of the same 
regiment ; or that most dashing of all our young 
cavalry offi.cers, Captain Berry ; or Captain Elli- 
cott, of the Scouts, would be : " Take a company, 
or squadron, or platoon of your men, about so 
many" — never assigning for this duty more than 
one-third or one-fourth of what the guerilla 
strength was reported to be — " and go chase those 
scallywags over the mountains until our train has 
got well up." And chased in this manner they 
were, and always allowed themselves to be, with- 
out offering any soldierly resistance whenever and 
wherever our troops in pursuit, if even decently 
officered, were one-third as numerous as them- 
selves. This, however, is a digression; and now 
to return to our lost sheep, from these rank-smell- 
ing, cowardly, and thievish mountain-goats. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 'WAR. 839 



DESTROYING RAILROAD TRACKS AS ONE OF THE 
"exact SCIENCES." 

At Liberty we struck the Virginia and East Ten- 
nessee railroad, running south-east from Lynch- 
burgh to Salem, and thence via Wytheville and 
Abingdon into the north-eastern section of that 
State which contains the grave of Andrew Jackson 
and the birth-place of Jackson's illustrious succes- 
sor and fellow-confessor. President Andrew John- 
son. It was a sight, indeed, worth going far to 
see — though one, we trust, never to be repeated in 
the history of this country — Crook's veteran infan- 
try, consisting of twelve West Virginia regiments, 
all hurrying to the work of destruction on that 
road, with the same delighted hum and buzz that 
we hear from a young swarm of wandering bees 
when they settle down on the white and well- 
sugared table-cloth which the careful farmer has 
spread for their detention. Up went the rails for 
miles and miles along the road ; soon the ties were 
gathered in separate piles and set on fire; next 
the rails were laid across these blazing bonfires, 
taking care to have the centre of each rail above 
the burning pile ; and then, when the iron at a 
white heat was soft and ductile, one or more sol- 
diers at each end would seize the cold extremity 
of each rail-bar, rush with it to the nearest tree, 
bringing the heated part against the trunk, and 



840 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

twist the writhing metal into rings or semicircles, 
or true-lovers' -knots, as best pleased their fancy. 
The torch would then be applied to all trestle- 
work bridges along the line, while bridges of stone 
or iron would be " sent kiting " by gunpowder. 

It was the illustrious Stonewall Jackson, who 
first invented and taught our boys how to destroy 
a railroad scientifically and thoroughly ; but the 
scholars soon improved on their teacher ; and in 
the veterans of Crook's division — all infantry, for 
cavalry are but hasty hands at such a workmanlike 
business — he had pupils of whom any master could 
have found no reason to be ashamed. It was, 
indeed, surprising — the pleasure taken by our foot 
soldiers in this species of labor. Whether, if 
Lavater or Mr. Fowler had examined the rank 
and file of our armies, either would have pro- 
nounced the bump of destructiveness unusually 
developed in our men, or not, we have no means 
of judging ; but of this fact we are sure : that no 
matter how long the march, how hot the day, how 
short the rations or water, how imminent and 
menacing soever might be the enemy's movements 
— the very moment our infantry struck a railroad 
their fatigue, thirst, hunger, and sense of danger 
all seemed to fall from them with their dropping 
knapsacks ; and they buckled down to the busi- 
ness of rendering that line of transportation of no 
further avail to the enemy for at least some 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 841 

months, with all the eager, joyous, and untiring 
energy of a flock of school-boys pelting snowballs 
at some detested usher. 



ON TO LYNCHBURG ! THE MINERAL WEALTH OF 
THIS SECTION. 

Marching from Liberty towards Lynchburgh 
along this line of railroad, and destroying it as we 
advanced, the indications became every hour more 
clear that General Lee had begun to pour down 
heavy reinforcements against us by the Lynch- 
burgh and Eichmond railroad, which General 
DufSe's cavalry column had been dispatched to 
destroy — a mission it had not been able to fulfil. 
At New London our friends in grey first showed 
in line of battle since Piedmont, but made no 
determined stand there — Averell's cavalry deve- 
loping to feel and drive them, while Sullivan's 
infantry demonstrated as if for a direct attack, and 
Crook sought to wheel round on their right flank 
and rear — a movement only thwarted by their 
withdrawal after some few hours of rather heavy 
but desultory fighting. We halted that night on 
the Big Otter, and had headquarters at a house 
alleged to be haunted — a large, and once hand- 
some, but now deserted red brick dwelling, of 
which the negroes in the vicinity told some tales 
that Mrs. Crowe might have been glad to gather 



842 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

for any new edition of that banquet of ghostly 
horrors — her '' ISTight-side of ITature." It is at 
New London that the famous Alum-spring throws 
up its mineral and healing treasures ; and indeed, 
many, if not most of the springs in this part of the 
country, are more or less strongly tinctured with 
the same astringent chemical. Perhaps, in the 
new development of wealth which awaits this 
entire section, the alum bed, which evidently 
underlies the fertile surface for a distance of many 
square miles, may play no inconspicuous part. 
It was not far from here that the house of a Mr. 
Mosby was burned — he being some kind of a 
cousin to Mosby the guerilla, and the bodies of 
two of our men, treacherously shot in cold blood 
in his yard as they were drawing water from his 
well, attesting that he" was not unworthy to claim 
kinship with his bushwhacking relative. 



Next day, the 17th of June, we started at ear- 
liest daylight in the direction of Lynchburgh, our 
way lying through a country more densely covered 
and obstructed by wood and underbrush than any 
we had yet seen. The roads were our only 
resource, even the skirmishers failing to make 
more than slow headway through the timber on 
either hand of them, and our advance being con- 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 343 

sequently much delayed. Meantime, the enemy 
were not inattentive to our operations, their light 
batteries and sharpshooters incessantly annoying 
the heads of our various columns ; and their skir- 
mishers keeping up a continual crackle of mus- 
ketry from behind the trees in the vicinity of our 
advance-guard and pioneers. 

It was therefore not until about two in the 
afternoon that we came upon their first line of 
irregular rifle-pits and rail-fence barricades, at a 
place variously styled by the negroes Diamond 
Hill, or the Old Stone Church; and here they 
succeeded in holding us until about eight p.m. that 
evening, when they were finally broken by a dash 
in of Averell's cavalry upon their right, and a 
splendid charge of Crook's infantry, under a heavy 
fire of grape, across some open fields and over 
their defences — the West Virginia boys clearing 
the rebel barricades with a vault, and using their 
clubbed muskets and bayonets in close quarters. 

Here, and at this moment, the rout of our 
grey-back friends became suddenly complete — 
two guns, four or five caissons, and many hun- 
dred prisoners falling into our hands ; and had it 
not been for the rapid coming on of night, and 
the necessity of removing our own and the ene- 
my's wounded out of the woods, which had 
caught fire during the action, and were now burn- 
ing fiercely with a mighty crackling and roar, 



844 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

only pierced by tlie terror-stricken screams of the 
mangled men who lay beneath the flaming canopy 
of leaves and branches — we might have pushed 
on into Lynchburgh that night, for as yet not more 
than a third of Early's corps (formerly Ewell's) 
had joined the forces under McCausland, and 
these were again as utterly beaten and demoralized 
as they had been on the fifth of the month, pre- 
vious to our having been joined by Crook and 
Averell from the Kanawha. 

BELLIGERENT RELATIVES. — A TRUE SOUTHERN 
BELLE. 

That night we lay in line of battle before the 
enemy's second and main line of works for the 
defence of Lynchburgh, on the south-eastern side 
— two powerful and regular earthwork forts, 
carefully built in 1861 and mounted with siege 
artillery crowning the slopes in front of us ; and 
a regular chain of heavy rifle-pits connecting 
these two together, and running off beyond them 
to join yet other regular forts on right and left. 
Our headquarters that night were at the beautiful 
residence of an aged gentleman named Hutter, 
formerly a major and paymaster in the United 
States army, and some kind of distant relative to 
General Hunter — as, by the way, in some degree 
of cousinship, more or less remote, were pretty 
nearly all the good families whose barns we had 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 845 

been emptying, and whose cattle we had been 
eating and driving off during the entire march. 
Indeed it was often ludicrously, though painfully 
amusing, to hear Colonel David Hunter Strother 
("Porte Crayon"), or the old Greneral himself, 
inquiring anxiously after the health of " Cousin 
Kitty," "Aunt Sallie," "Cousin Joe," or "Uncle 
Bob," from some nice old Virginia lady with 
smoothed apron, silver spectacles, and in tears, or 
some pretty young rebel beauty in homespun, 
without hoops and in a towering passion, — our 
soldiers meanwhile cleaning out smoke-houses and 
granaries by wholesale ; and the end of the con- 
versation, as the affectionate though politically 
sundered relatives parted, usually finding those 
of the rebel side without a week's food in the 
house, without a single slave to do their bidding, 
and with horses, cattle, sheep, bacon, pigs, poul- 
try, and so forth, things only to be recalled in 
ecstatic dreams. 

This Major Hutter "had one only daughter, 
the divine " — but her name escaped us. For the 
inexpressible sweetness of her pure silvery voice 
and exquisite repose of manner, however, the 
lady's image is yet a thing of vivid force in our 
faithful memory — her eyes shedding no tear as 
she saw in that hour of the gloaming, all the 
refined surroundings of a costly and luxurious 

home swept into ruin ; and her cheek blanching 
15* 



346 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

no shade of its clear olive-pink, though aware 
that with the earliest dawn the heretofore splendid 
and happy home of her childhood — the shrine to 
which, we have no doubt, proud wooers must 
have come from far and near to court the sun- 
shine of her smile — would in all human proba- 
bility become the central position for which two 
infuriate armies must contend. " Oh, how I pray 
for peace," she exclaimed, as we opened a blind 
in the drawing-room (metamorphosed the preced- 
ing night into an Adjutant-General's ofl&ce), to 
see if the east yet gave any signs of dawn. " Do 
not misunderstand me, however," she continued, 
in that silvery voice of inextinguishable sweet- 
ness. " Do not think I crave, or would accept, 
that peace you talk about — the peace of subjuga- 
tion ; for I am Southern in every fibre;" and her 
bright eyes kindled brighter, her cheek took a 
deeper flush, and her musical voice swept upward 
into a yet higher treble as if to give assurance 
of her faith. " This dress I wear " — a plain 
grey homespun, but made beautiful by the wo- 
manhood it covered — " I have carded, and spun, 
and cut out, and put together with my own 
hands. Oh, we have given up everything for the 
cause, save the barest necessaries of life; and I 
cannot believe that God would allow a people to 
suffer so much as we have done, if not intending 
to reward us with final victory." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 847 

SECOND day's ENGAGEMENT BEFORE LYNCH- 
BURGH. 

Next morning, at daylight, the skirmishers 
began amusing each other, and by seven o'clock 
the work was lively. All night long we had 
heard the incessant screaming of trains on the 
Lynchburgh and Eichmond railroad, as the rein- 
forcements sent by G-eneral Lee continued to 
arrive in steady stream — General Duffie's attempt, 
made the preceding night, to destroy the long 
bridge across the James Eiver, having been de- 
feated by superior forces. Yarious charges that 
we made up the hills on which the earthworks 
stood were 'heavily repulsed — only part of one 
Ohio regiment getting over their works, and that 
part remaining therein — either from pride in their 
achievement, or because unable to fight their way 
out again. Our men, too, now began to suffer se- 
verely for want of proper food — General Sullivan 
having reported the night before that his men were 
then eating their last rations, a piece of informa- 
tion which General Hunter answered by the laco- 
nic remark : " Tell them there is plenty of food 
in Lynchburgh." It is true we had yet with us 
plenty of beef cattle collected as we marched 
along, for we had been mainly subsisting on the 
country ; but from the rapid movements of the 
past few days, and the activity all round us of 



348 BECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAE. 

the enemy's cavalry, we had not been able to 
gather in any corn or materials for making bread. 
Our coffee and sugar, too, were giving out — and 
what are soldiers good for without their coffee ? 

By noon it became evident that the enemy's 
forces were gaining. a large numerical ascendancy, 
a continual stream of Early's corps flowing from 
the railroad terminus to the scene of action, and 
their right flank beginning to overlap our left 
with some danger of turning it. It was then, 
after a brief consultation with Generals Crook^ 
Averell, and Sullivan, that Hunter gave orders 
for our trains to commence falling back rapidly 
towards Salem, on the Tennessee and Lynchburgh 
railroad line; but of this — for the orders were 
secret, and the trains far in our rear — neither our 
own soldiers nor the enemy knew anything until 
nightfall, the battle being thereafter continued on 
our side with even greater activity, in order to 
cover this movement, and our men believing 
firmly that they were to enter Lynchburgh as 
conquerors if it cost them a week's steady fight- 
ing. 

Our situation, however, was indeed critical, and 
fully justified the belief entertained both by 
Generals Lee and Grant, that none of Hunter's 
expedition could return save as prisoners. We 
were but fifteen or sixteen thousand effective men 
at the outside, cut off from our communications, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 849 

rapidly running short of ammunition, wholly 
destitute of forage and rations, operating in a 
country intensely hostile to us, with no hope of 
any reinforcements, no hope of supplies nearer 
than the far side of the Alleghanies, in presence 
of an enemy already amounting to thirty-two 
thousand well-supplied men, and at the terminus 
of a good railroad in working order, by which 
General Lee could have poured down upon us 
thirty thousand more of his veterans, had such 
been his judgment or pleasure. Back the road 
we had come we could not go, as the country was 
eaten out, in the first place ; as an inferior force 
cannot collect supplies in presence of a supe- 
rior, even if supplies lay around them as thick as 
in that mythical town whose roofs were of pan- 
cake, and through whose streets little roast pigs 
ran crying out, " Come eat me ;" and lastly, be- 
cause the enemy had another good railroad from 
Lynchburg to Stanton, or rather to Waynesboro', 
just twelve miles therefrom, by means of which 
they could throw any force they pleased across 
our front, while still pressing us in rear with 
equal or even stronger forces. . 

These were the considerations which caused the 
order, issued secretly at noon, for our trains to 
commence retreating toward Salem; and it was 
doubtless the hope of " bagging us," body and boots, 
when his full reinforcements should have come 



350 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

up, and wlieii (as lie expected) we should com- 
mence to fall back down the Shenandoah, that in- 
duced Early not to press us any harder than he 
did during the balance of this 18th day of June, 
1864 — anniversary of that most memorable world- 
battle which sent the first Napoleon to St. Helena. 
Press us, however, and rather heavily, Gen. Early 
did on several occasions that day — more especially 
about 3 P.M., when, with a charge over his works 
and down the hill, he broke Sullivan's infantry on 
our left, and drove the gallant Thoburne's brigade 
(Thoburne since killed), and the brigade of Col. 
Wells, of Massachusetts (also " dead on the field of 
honour"), pell-mell through the woods. This dis- 
aster, however, was but of short duration, though 
extremely threatening at one time, two brigades 
from Crook in the right-centre reinforcing our 
left ; and the engagement after that sullenly set- 
tling down into an artillery and skirmishing duel, 
with no charges though many demonstrations, and 
consequently no repulses or heavy losses upon 
either side. Averell's cavalry took no part in it, 
that officer wishing to keep his men fresh for a raid 
toward Danville which he projected under Hun- 
ter's directions, but failed to put in practice ; and 
Duffie's cavalry doing but little on the extreme 
left, from the woody and broken nature of the 
ground, as also from the fact that there were 
earthworks to contend against, and that Early's 



RECOLLFOTIONS OF THE WAR. 351 

veteran infantry were not the kind of troops with 
whom it would b:^ safe work for a forageless cav- 
alry to play tricks. 

Before concluding this chapter, we cannot for- 
bear inserting heru, though a little out of its place, 
the brief and simple, yet how significant dispatch, 
in which the great Lieut. -General of our Armies 
frowned down and quietly trod into the mire 
Tinder his feet an attempt made in certain inter- 
ested quarters to luake Hunter a scape-goat for all 
the flurry and fus?: of Gren. Early's subsequent raid 
into "Maryland, My Maryland," and the demon- 
strations of that bibulous, one-legged warrior in 
front of the walls of Washington. It was thus 
wrote our good n,nd gallant Lieut. -General at a 
time when attempts were being made to blame 
Hunter, who was then crossing the Alleghanies 
with a starving command and with horses dying by 
the thousand for want of forage, for not checking 
in the Shenandoah with his fourteen or fifteen 
thousand worn, vrasted, shoeless, and nearly am- 
munitionless troops, the thirty-five thousand well- 
supplied veterans under General Jubal Early, for 
whose proper reception in Maryland and around 
the District of Co^vimbia, no proper provision had 
been either made or makable by the authorities : 



352 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAE. 

" Headquarters, Armies of the IJ. S., ) 
City Point, Va., July 15th, 1864. f 
" Eon, C. A. Dana, Assist. Sec. of War : 

"I am sorry to see such a disposition, to con- 
demn a brave old soldier, as General Hunter is 
known to be, without a hearing. 

" He is known to have advanced into the ene- 
my's country towards their main army, inflicted 
a much greater damage upon them than they, 
with double his force, have inflicted upon us, and 
they moving directly away from our main army. 

'' Hunter acted, too, in a country where we had 
no friends, whilst the enemy have only operated 
in territory where, to say the least, many of the 
inhabitants are their friends. 

" If General Hunter has made war on the news- 
papers* of Western Virginia, probably he has 
done right. 

" I fail to see yet that General Hunter has not 
acted with great promptness and great success. 
Even the enemy give him great credit for courage, 
and congratulate themselves that he will give them 
a chance of getting even with him. 

" (Signed) U. S. Grant, Lieut- General 

" Ojfficial: Geo. K Leet, A. A. Gen." 

* The only newspaper G-eneral Huntor suppressed in West 
Virginia was one at Parkersburgh, tbe editor of which— a loyal 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 853 

CHAPTER IT. 
END OF THE RAID. — NOW FOR FOOD AND SAFETY. 

Hunter had done a noble work up tlie valley — 
how noble did not become known until the cap- 
ture of the rebel archives showed that Early's 
corps of thirty thousand picked men, thrown upon 
us finally by Lee, had been collected and were 
designed as a reinforcement for General Johnson, 
who was then facing our Sherman before Atlanta 
— a reinforcement which, about equally balanced as 
the opposing forces in the south-west then were, 
might very materially, and to our detriment, have 
altered the results in that region, had Lee's pri- 
mary intention been carried out. 

But Hunter's successful raid beyond the bar- 
rier-lines of Mount Crawford, never passed before 
by any Union army, nor ever afterwards passed 
until the close of the war, summoned Lee to de- 
fend instantly and at any cost, the valley whose 
maiden soil — untrodden heretofore, at least south 
of Harrisonburgh — contained, in a very great 
measure, the granary and armory of the main 
rebel army holding Grant in check before Eich- 
mond. The cloth-mills to clothe his men, the 

man — on being shown the falsity and public injury of his state- 
ments, fully and cheerfully acknowledged that he "had been 
served just right." 



854 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

flour mills to feed them, the gun-stock factories, 
shoe-shops, saddle and harness factories, the count- 
less furnaces and foundries from which came the 
main munitions for his army — ill-able to afford 
such a loss — all these had been ^' going up in a 
balloon" incessantly, with every mile of our march 
from Port Kepublic to Lynchburgh ; and it was, 
indeed, as a picture of the scenes of this raid, 
considered in a generic light, and as symbolizing 
all other raids, that the following lines were sub- 
sequently written by our distinguished Ex-Orderly, 
in regard to General Sherman^s yet more famous 
march from Atlanta to the Atlantic : 



THE SONG OP SHERMAN S ARMY. 

A pillar of fire by night, 
A pillar of smoke by day, 
Some hours of march — then a halt to fight, 
And so we hold our way ; 
Some hours of march — then a halt to fight, 
As on we hold our way. 



Over mountain and plain and stream, 
To some bright Atlantic bay, 
With our arms aflash in the morning beam, 
We hold our festal way ; 
With our arms aflash in the morning beam, 
We hold our checkless way I 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 355 

There is terror wherever we come. 



There i« terror and wild dismay 
When they see the Old Flag and hear the drum 
Annour oe us on the way ; 
When they see the Old Flag, and hear the drum 
Beating time to our onward way. 

Never unlimber a gun 

For thi..:;e villanous lines in grey, 
Draw sabres ! and at 'em upon the run I 
'Tis thus we clear our way 
Draw sabres and soon you will see them run, 
As we hold our conquering way. 

The loyal, who long have been dumb, 
Are loud in their cheers to-day ; 
And the old mcL. out on their crutches come, 
To see us hold our way ; 
And the old men out on their crutches come, 
To bless us on our way. 

Around us in rear and flanks. 
Their futile squadrons play , 
With a sixty-mile front of steady ranks, 
We hold our checkless way ; 
With a sixty-mile front of serried ranks, 
Our banner clears the way. 

Hear the spattering fire that starts 
From the woods and copses grey, 
There is just enough fighting to quicken our hearts, 
As we ^roHc along the way ! 
There is just enough fighting to warm our hearts, 
As we rattle along the way. 



856 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAB. 

Upon different roads abreast 
The heads of our columns gay, 
With fluttering flags, all forward pressed, 
Hold on their conquering way. 
With fluttering flags to victory pressed, 
We hold our glorious way. 

Ah, traitors ! who bragged so bold 
In the sad war's early day, 
Did nothing predict you should ever behold 
The Old Flag come this way ? 
Did nothing predict you should yet behold 
Our banner come back this way ? 

By heaven I 'tis a gala march, 

'Tis a pic-nic or a play ; 

Of all our long war 'tis the crowning arch, 

Hip, hip ! for Sherman's way ! 

Of all our long war this crowns the arch — 

For Sherman and Grant hurrah I 



THE RETURN" COMMENCES. — WAS IT A DEFEAT 
OR VICTORY? 

That we could not capture Lynchburgh became 
very painfully evident during the operations of 
June 18th, some details of which were given in 
the preceding chapter. Indeed the question now 
to be considered — and with all the odds heavily 
against any answer in our favor — was : whether 
Lynchburgh would not capture us ? Short of am- 
munition, cut off by hundreds of miles and two 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 857 

ranges of m dud tains from our base, and wholly 
out of supplies save a little coffee and sugar left 
in the train of that excellent ofl&cer, Major-Gen- 
George Crook, we were in presence of an enemy 
already heavily superior to us in numbers, close to 
his main army, operating in his own country, and 
every moment being further reinforced from Eich- 
mond, as we could both see and hear by the trains 
incessantly arriving, and the steady stream of 
troops hurrying from the railroad terminus to the 
scene of action during the torrid day — day hot in 
a double sense : and neither pleasant. 

It was in view of these facts, that our trains had 
been sent back on the road towards Salem at 
about noon on the 18th, although the fighting — 
sometimes furious, sometimes desultory — conti- 
nued with but slight intermission until after sun- 
down ; every possible demonstration being made, 
and indeed our own soldiers firmly believing, that 
we meant to renew the attack next morning. But 
that night about ten o'clock, with our picket-line 
doubled and in the strictest silence, that nothing 
might be known of our movements, the march of 
our little army away from Lynchburgh and to- 
wards Salem began — our poor boys trudging along 
wearily enough, after a long day of incessant con- 
flict, or preparation for conflict ; and with the de- 
pressing conviction of defeat upon their spirits 
which soldiers can never shake off when failing to 



858 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

attain any point against wiiicli their efforts — even 
in a feint — have been directed. It may only have 
been a feint or a diversion to the general, but all 
such matters are solemn verities to the rank and 
file. They knew they had not been either broken 
or beaten ; but still they had not entered Lynch- 
burgh ; and this, therefore, was to them a defeat — 
an opinion in which the wise JST^rthern newspapers 
seemed fully to agree. 

But was it a defeat? — a question only, but 
easily to be answered by referring to the instruc- 
tions under which the expedition had been organ- 
ized, and the objective point at which it struck. 
The orders of Lieut-General Grant to Hunter, on 
that ofi&cer's relieving Sigel, we.e to the effect that 
he should " reorganize Sigel's beaten army, and 
with it readvance up the valley, demonstrating 
for the capture of Stanton, but not attacking it in 
case either the enemy or the fortifications, or both 
together, should appear too strong ; in which case 
he was to avoid any general engagement, but keep 
his column moving, and find employment for as 
many of the enemy as possible, in various direc- 
tions." 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAE. 859 



" ONE OF THE MOST BRILLIANT AND IMPORTANT 
SUCCESSES OF THE ENTIRE WAR." 

This formed the substance, and the whole sub- 
stance, of Grant's original instructions ; and with 
these data kept in view, the public will at once 
perceive how much better than he had been or- 
dered to do, General Hunter did. He not only 
captured Stanton, as the result of the battle of 
Piedmont, but Lexington, Buchanan, Liberty, and 
all the intermediate towns from Port Kepublic to 
Lynchburgh — towns heretofore inviolable, and all 
busily engaged in pouring eastward to Lee sup- 
plies of everything that commander required for 
his army. He had not only employ ed all the Yal- 
ley Forces, but beaten them into a disorganized 
rabble ; and finally drew off to check him thirty 
thousand picked men of the veteran army of 
Northern Virginia under General Early, who had 
been collected and were designed by the rebel 
general-in-chief for the reinforcement of General 
Joe Johnson before Atlanta. He had given to 
the flames the better half of Lee's commissary, 
quartermaster, and ordnance departments — cer- 
tainly all of these that lay between Harrisonburgh 
and Lynchburgh ; and no wonder, knowing and 
appreciating the inestimable value of these ser- 
vices (as, it would seem, the Hon. Charles A. 
Dana did not), that General Grant wrote the very 



860 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

noble eulogy of Hunter's success whicli was, for 
the first time, published in our last chapter. 

As to the alleged barbarity of General Hunter 
in " burning private houses" during this expedi- 
tion, we have already shown that he burned but 
five — each on a specific charge and proof that its 
owner was a bushwhacker ; but what would the 
pensive public have thought had he received in 
time Greneral Grant's subsequent instructions, or 
had he been able to retreat down the Shenandoah 
on his return, in which case they would have been 
most faithfully complied with? These second 
instructions were — in order to prevent another 
incursion by the enemy down the valley into 
Maryland, such as Early subsequently made — to 
" make the Shenandoah a wilderness over which 
the crow purposing to fly would have to carry his 
own provender in his claws" — orders afi;erward 
partly carried out by Sheridan, who never, how- 
ever, got up the valley any further than Harrison- 
burgh, though a raiding party of his cavalry are 
said to have been for some few hours in Stanton. 
So, also. Hunter was blamed for an order that 
wherever any of his men or officers were assassi- 
nated by bushwhackers, the country for five miles 
around the spot should be laid utterly waste ; and 
yet when young Lieut. Meigs, of the Engineers, 
was murdered by some roving miscreants, the gal- 
lant Sheridan caused that precise order to be pre- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 361 

cisely executed, and there was general approval 
through the Northern press; so true is it that 
" one cat will be praised for doing what another 
cat will be killed for looking at." 

But now to cast aside these digressions, and re- 
sume the story of our return from Lynchburgh : 

THE ENEMY AWAKE AT LAST. — ACTIONS AT LIBER- 
TY AND ELSEWHERE. 

So perfectly had our retrograde movement been 
concealed, and so fully convinced were the enemy 
of our determination to fall back, if at all, down 
the Shenandoah, that it was not until the morning 
of the 20th — as our rear-guard were repassing 
through Liberty — that their cavalry and mounted 
infantry came up in sufficient force to make us 
halt. Greneral Averell held them, with his and 
Duffie's cavalry divisions, as long as possible ; 
but finally Crook's infantry had to be sent back to 
his support — the carbines of the cavalry being of 
but little use against the long-range muskets of 
Early's mounted infantry, of course dismounted for 
action. At this time, taking our whole little army 
through, we had left but twelve rounds of car- 
tridges per man, while at least one of the cavalry 
brigades was entirely out of ammunition ; and as 
we had no means of judging how long, or in what 
force, the enemy would hang around our skirts to 
16 



362 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

harass "us, the prospects were not encouraging. 
All efforts were now directed to making our lads 
reserve their fire as long as possible, so that not 
a cartridge might be wasted; and whenever a 
man fell, either killed or wounded, there would 
be a dozen squabbling over him in a moment for 
the precious contents of the cartridge-box which 
he could use no more. 

That night we crossed the Alleghanies through 
Buford's Gap, and halted within some seven or 
eight miles of Salem, after a march of twenty- 
seven miles — some few dozen men and many hun- 
dreds of the horses giving out ; but the spirits of 
the army, as a whole, being much better than 
might have been expected, when our destitute 
condition was considered, the mountainous and 
utterly sterile character of the country which yet 
lay before us, and the incessant heavy skirmishing, 
both by night and day, which the enemy — as if to 
harass us and drive away all sleep — kept up 
around our rear and flanks. At Salem we saw 
the debris and railroad ruins of Averell's famous 
raid made during the preceding January, in which 
he " rode, slid, climbed, and swam" seven hundred 
miles in an incredibly brief number of days — how 
many, or rather how few, we forget ; but such is 
fame. That expedition, we may here remark, 
used up a great many hundred men, chiefly frost- 
bitten, and many thousand horses — indeed pretty 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 863 

nearly every horse that was engaged in it ; while 
Its results— only such injury as cavalry could in- 
flict on a railroad track in a few hours— were not, 
perhaps, in any substantial degree commensurate 
with Its enormous cost; nor had it any military 
value otherwise than as a proof of what our 
Northern men could endure and yet survive. 

The day following came rumors of the enemy 
at Fmcastle in great force, threatening our right 
flank, and, indeed, to cut off our retreat altoge- 
ther—a rumor rather supported by the increasing 
seventy of the skirmishing— which soon amount^ 
ed to quite a skirmish as we neared Newcastle, 
where some supplies were found; but only a 
mouthful, so to speak, for an army already begin- 
nmg to starve. It was just beyond Newcastle, 
and while crossing Craig's mountain— a portion 
of the Catawba range— that we lost, though the 
enemy did not gain, six pieces of artillery belong- 
mg to Sullivan's division; and as this matter has 
been much discussed, and almost invariably mis- 
represented, we may as well here set the story at 
rest as allow it to travel further. 



364 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 



hunter's only disaster. — SIX OF HIS GUNS 
DESTROYED. 

Our march was over wild, waterless, and abrupt 
mountains — forest-clad precipices yawning beneath 
us on either side of the road, while forest-covered 
mountains towered thousands of feet above us on 
the other. All the soft and beautiful characteris- 
tics of the Blue Kidge were missing here. The 
valleys were rocky, sterile, scrubby, and repulsive, 
and water could only be found in some of the 
largest creeks in the deepest ravines ; whereas on 
the Blue Eidge clear springs gushed forth in cool 
and crystal abundance from beneath every jutting 
stone almost to the highest peaks of the moun- 
tains. But few tracts of reclaimed land could 
anywhere be seen except in the Catawba valley. 
The few houses along our line were for the most 
part deserted and in ruins — three years of inces- 
sant military operations, and guerilla and bush- 
whacking fighting, having apparently convinced 
the inhabitants that "green fields and pastures 
new" in some other region had become a necessity. 

With the heavy skirmish or engagement near 
Newcastle, we appeared to have shaken off the 
greater part of the enemy's pursuing force, but 
flying squadrons or columns of their cavalry still 
appeared at intervals; and General Duffie, who 
led the advance, was ordered to strongly picket 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 865 

all side-roads and bridle-paths leading in upon our 
main line of march. This duty in one instance he 
neglected ; and the result was that the enemy, 
who could see all our movements from the sur- 
rounding hills, suddenly sent in a picked force of 
about two hundred mounted men, upon an un- 
guarded side-road, to attack the artillery of 
Sullivan's division — said artillery having, by a 
blunder, got mixed up with the wagon-train. Of 
these mounted men, about fifty carried hatchets, 
with which they hacked the wheels of about ten 
pieces of the artillery train of our first division. 
While they were at work, however, a section of 
Captain Du Pout's regular battery wheeled into 
position and sent grape and spherical case through 
the bodies of over thirty of them. Col. Schoon- 
maker's brigade of General Averell's division also 
arrived quickly on the scene from the rear, which 
Averell was guarding ; and of the two hundred 
picked men who formed the attacking force, it is 
questionable if over seventy got back to their 
camp. Four of the ten injured guns were imme- 
diately remounted on the spare wheels of the ba- 
lance of the artillery ; and the six guns that could 
not be toted away were so efiectually destroyed 
as to remain mere lumber on the road, of no 
possible future use in warfare. 

This disaster, so much paraded and prated 
about, formed the sole injury of materiel inflicted 



S66 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

bj the enemy upon Hunter's command during the 
expedition. They never captured one of our 
wagons or ambulances, though we had to burn or 
destroy greater part of both on our return, in con- 
sequence of the horses that should draw them 
dying off for want of forage. They never broke 
our lines in any engagement, save the brief disor- 
der on our left in the second day's struggle before 
Lynchburgh ; and they never took a prisoner 
from us, except those of the Ohio men who got 
over their works and could not get back ; and 
some wounded, sick, and starving stragglers who 
fell to the rear — in considerable numbers, it must 
be confessed — during the terrible marches of the 
next half-dozen days. What we lost of materiel^ 
however, they did not gain. Even the saddles 
were taken off the dying cavalry horses — dying 
now by many hundreds daily — and either thrown 
into the empty commissary and quartermasters' 
wagons and brought along, or burned in con- 
venient piles. None of the men threw away 
their arms. NothiDg could be more admirable 
than their conduct ; and nothing but the pinched 
faces of those who were continually falling out of 
line and to the rear, told the story of their hunger 
and weakness, for there was no grumbling save in 
the headquarters of one conspicuously grumbling 
brigadier ; and even he too good, brave, and care- 
ful a soldier in other respects to be censured by 



RECOLLECTIONS OP THE WAR. 367 

name even for this. But he was ''an almighty 
grumbler." 

CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES. — TERRIBLE SUF- 
FERINGS FROM HUNGER. 

Beautiful, indeed, in its wild and forest-covered 
sublimity and ruggedness was the country through 
which we were now passing, had any of us been 
in the mood to enjoy such scenery. None of us 
were, however — at least not much ; for some 
pounded corn, with a rasher of bacon or an onion, 
formed a feast only too rarely attainable even by 
the highest officers ; while day by day the few cat- 
tle we had driven along ahead of each division 
began to fail, and there was literally no food — no 
cattle, sheep, hogs, or corn — in the ever-rising, 
ever-falling wilderness of mountains through 
which our diminishing column trailed its weary- 
length like a wounded, all but dying, serpent. 
Each mountain-ridge that had risen before us 
seemed of interminable height ; but to be — thank 
Heaven! — the last we should have to climb. 
" Meadow Bluffs" was the cry and thought in 
every heart. " Meadow Bluffs " where, as was 
reported, there were a million rations left by Crook 
and Averell only some fifteen or twenty days be- 
fore under charge of a battalion of the Ohio One 
Hundred Days' Militia. "Never mind, boys! 
bear up as well as you can. Only three more — 



368 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

only two more — only one more day's march to 
Meadow Bluffs, and then — a million rations !" 

Ah, how the hunger-pinched faces brightened 
up at those glad but deceptive words ! How the 
struggling men bent their breasts against the next 
hill, scorning to throw away the burden of arms 
or knapsacks — yea, even the burdens of useless 
relics or plunder which some of them had picked 
up along their line of march. We found one 
company, sharp-set by the pangs of hunger and 
half dead from fatigue, but carrying along with it 
a wooden-bedded billiard table which the boys 
thought would be "a nice thing to have in the 
house" if they ever got back to any Christian 
camp. "Hang me," said Captain Towne, our 
chief signal officer, " hang me, if I don't expect 
to see my rascals carrying a privy along with them, 
plank by plank, in hopes of setting it up for gene- 
ral delectation when they reach Meadow Bluffs !" 
It was the grotesqueness of the thought, perhaps, 
which impressed this sentence, as one irresistibly 
ludicrous, on a memory from which many brighter 
and better things have faded. 

But mountain still towered above mountain, 
each apparently taller than the last ; and from the 
top of each as we gained it, our saddened and 
sickening eyes dropped down into the deep gulfs 
of valleys, beyond which towered mountain-walls 
apparently blacker, steeper, loftier, more sterile 



EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 869 

and waterless than any we had yet traversed. 
The limited diet of mere fresh beef, too, without 
salt, corn, biscuit, or vegetables of any kind, be- 
gan to revolt the stomachs of the weary men, and 
cases of aggravated diarrhoea soon became an epi- 
demic. Still, as a whole, the men bore up won- 
derfully, such of the infantry as were not actually 
sickened growing more rugged, sinewy, bronzed, 
and soldierlike — confident that their sufferings 
were not in vain; that they had inflicted far 
greater loss on the enemy than paid for all they 
were enduring; that Grant would not overlook 
the help their division had given to his main ope- 
rations — as he did not ; and that in a few days 
more— a few miles more — there would be plenty 
for all of them, and a fortnight's — perhaps a 
month's — rest in well-provisioned camps before 
any renewed assumption of the war-path. 

SWEET SPRINGS AND THE WHITE SULPHUR. — 
SOUTHERN WATERING PLACES DURING THE 
WAR. 

At length, on the 24:th, we reached Sweet 
Springs — that loveliest watering-place of the in- 
land, and with the sweetest water ; and on the 
day following, after a long and tedious march over 
hills apparently interminable and through forests 
of the densest shade, we descended into the little 
valley of the White Sulphur Springs, where at 
16* 



370 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

least and at last our horses were able to enjoy one 
day's good grazing. A glorious place the White 
Sulphur must have been — will be again — in days 
of peace, despite the sickening stench of its yet 
pure and wholesome waters. Surrounded by vast 
hills bearing the finest and largest timber conceiv- 
able, the nestling valley lies like an emerald bot- 
tom to a great bowl of green and purple porphyry. 
Here were immense hotels of red brick and white 
stucco-work, with terraces and rows of tributary 
Italian and Swiss villas farmed out to separate fami- 
lies, but all depending on the now empty hotels 
for such proud and joyous life as they contained 
in the happy days gone by. As to the waters — 
the main well was pellucid and pure, but emitted 
such an odor of sulphuretted hydrogen, as if a 
thousand baskets of the rottenest eggs or worst- 
decayed mackerel ever known lay festering at its 
bottom. The hotels had been closed and deserted 
from the commencement of the war — the largest 
one, able to accommodate with its sub-buildings 
over one thousand guests, standing open, but 
not inviting, as our soldiers crowded and shouted 
through its deserted rooms and corridors. The 
mirrors remained on the walls, as useless and not 
portable lumber. So the iron bedsteads and beds, 
pitchers and basins, remained in the multitudinous 
rooms ; but the carpets and curtains had been 
long since cut up to furnish clothing or bedding 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 871 

to the rebel troops, and tlie furniture had either 
been carried awaj or burned. Alas ! there was 
nothing to eat in the vast dining-room, once so 
hospitable; and the scene, perhaps, appeared to 
the writer all the sadder for the reason that it was 
witnessed in company with " Porte Crayon," who 
never wearied of relating droll and varied anec- 
dotes of its former greatness and splendor before 
the "chivalry" had determined that Southern 
rights must be achieved by war. 

At Sweet Springs, the White Sulphur, and the 
Hed Springs — all tenantless, all deserted — a con- 
trast with our own Newport, Saratoga, and Cape 
May, not favorable to the men, nor eke the ladies 
of the North, was forced on the attention. These 
resorts had been abandoned from the first day 
of the war — as much abandoned in 1861 and 1862, 
when the South was practically triumphant and 
the North covered with disgrace and threatened 
with defeat, as in 1863 and 1864, when the tide 
began visibly turning. Was this so at Newport, 
Cape May, Saratoga, Lake George ? Did not the 
women of the South give more help, more sym- 
pathy, more passionate devotion, more self-sacri- 
ficing denial and heroism to their side of the strug- 
gle than did our colder Northern dames? How 
often have we been told in various parts of the 
South, when asking some lady at whose house we 
had made headquarters, to sing : " You would not 



372 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

like my songs. Since the war, we Southern wo- 
men have sung only the songs of our country ;" 
and then, when assured that those, of all others, 
were the songs we most wished to hear — with 
what dazzling passion — almost frenzy — of voice, 
eye, swelling figure, and gesture, as of an inspired 
Pythoness, would be sent shrilling forth " Stone- 
wall Jackson's Way," " The Bonnie Blue Flag," 
"On to Richmond, " or that noblest lyric of the 
war, " Maryland ! my Maryland !" 

Indeed the women of the South were the back- 
bone — the life and soul of the rebellion. They 
made it disgraceful for any able-bodied man to 
remain out of the ranks. All members of the 
Home Guard Brigade were presented with bon- 
nets, fans, petticoats, and rouge-boxes, by commit- 
tees of patriotic belles. They wore no foreign 
goods, nor coveted any, throwing away their silks 
at the beginning of the contest, and writing 
" Shoddy" on the brows of all their sex who were 
too lazy to make homespun cloth, or too proud to 
wear it. Even hoops were discarded from an 
early date, and their jewel-ornaments were melted 
down in local treasuries for the equipment of 
volunteers. That our Northern women might not 
have done as well and as bravely, had we been 
the invaded side, the writer has no disposition 
either to question or assert. He only avers that 
they did not ; and that few of them — save when 



KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 873 

actually compelled by the absence of their male 
supporters in the ill-paid ranks of the army— 
made any voluntary, or even visible, reduction in 
their expenditures or style of living. " Madam," 
we once heard Major Sam Stockton say, with a 
graceful and well-turned compliment, to a beauti- 
ful young rebel girl who had just finished an ex- 
quisitely rendered but very furious song against 
the "Yankee Invader," and then asked him, as 
she rose with flushed cheeks from the piano, what 
he thought of it — " Madam, I think," said Sam, 
"that if we had only had a few such ladies as 
yourself in the North, we would have driven 
all your armies into the Gulf of Mexico before the 
second year of this distressing war." 

And now to return to our muttons — or rather 
to our army which had neither mutton nor bread. 

NO FOOD AT MEADOW BLUFFS. — GEN. GRANT's 
REBELLIOUS AUNT. 

But why enter in detail upon the sufferings of 
our further march across the Greenbrier river, 
through Lewisburgh, where we found some food 
in a few stores, and past Bunger's Mill, where also 
was a little corn-meal. We had a sickening dis- 
appointment at Meadow Bluffs, from which the 
stores had been removed — partly back to Loup's 
Creek on the Kanawha, and partly had been 
burned by the militia battalion left to guard them, 



374 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

under some sudden stampede created by a hun- 
dred or so of mounted bushwhackers appearing 
in the vicinity. At the Bluffs, however, we got 
some score or two of sheep and a few hogs, the 
country now growing more level, and with more 
numerous signs (partly in the deserted fortifica- 
tions thrown up by General Henry A. Wise) of 
having once been inhabited. 

It was a tough ride and march across the last 
high spurs of the Alleghanies that brought us to 
Meadow Bluffs ; but on the next day — June 26, 
1864 — a march of nearly thirty miles brought us 
to the house of " the widow Jones," who is an aunt 
to General Grant, and was then — we fervently 
hope still is — a remarkably bright, hospitable, and 
kindly old body, though excessively rebelliouSj at 
whose well-furnished table for the first time in 
many weeks our nearly famishing party sat down 
to a meal having no stint of scarcity ; and with 
such gorgeous accompaniments as iron forks, a 
table-cloth, sweet milk in glasses, and tea — actual 
tea — in cups, as made our recent existence seem 
only a preparative whetting of our appetites to this 
banquet of the immortal gods ! 

Next morning Generals Hunter and Crook, 
with an escort of such staff of&cers and mounted 
men as still had horses and could keep up, crossed 
the Big and Little Sewell mountains — Hunter 
being specially anxious to meet and hurry for- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 375 

ward the supply-trains previously ordered up from 
Gauley Bridge, or rather Loup Creek, which was 
our then base of supplies in the Kanawha, being 
close to the head of navigation on that river. 
Half way on the road we met the first of these 
trains, lumbering along under a guard of some 
Ohio militia — a train with 20,000 rations; and 
closely followed by another larger one with 75,000 
rations more 1 Better and better ! we learn that 
there are a million rations and 12,000 new and 
complete sets of uniforms and equipments — for 
our entire command was shoeless and in rags — 
only ten miles ahead of us, at Loup Creek ; and 
here — at the Hawk's Nest, looking down into the 
loveliest and most perfect triangle of scenery our 
eyes ever rested upon, and with the wild shouts 
of our poor boys, some miles yet in the rear, as 
they meet the first train and empty its contents 
into their stomachs, this narrative may most 
rightly and welcomelybe brought to its conclusion. 
Here ended Hunter's campaign of the Shenandoah 
proper — the movement of his troops down the 
Kanawha to Charleston, and from thence up the 
Ohio to Parkersburgh, where we first heard of 
Early's invasion of Maryland, and from thence to 
Harper's Ferry and Maryland, forming a distinct 
episode or branch of history. 



376 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 



ROMANCE OF THE WAR IN THE SHENANDOAH — 
END OF THE RAID AT THE HAWK's NEST. 

In conclusion, let us say that this narrative has 
grown upon our hands into far larger proportions 
than we either expected or have wished ; and yet 
we have condensed and suppressed everything 
that appeared in anywise compressible or suppress- 
ive with due deference to truth and maintaining 
the interest of our readers. In our pocket-book — 
a very poorly-kept diary, briefly scribbled in the 
scanty moments of leisure that duty did not occu- 
py — there are many passages of but a few lines 
that might well be expanded, with their surround- 
ing circumstances, into chapters of absorbing and 
instructive interest. It is in the beautiful but 
bushwhacking, inviting but treacherous, moun- 
tain-girdled but yet most insecure valleys of the 
Shenandoah and Kanawha, that the romance 
writers of the war will hereafter find their most 
fitting ground and appropriate traditions and in- 
spirations. Great armies like that of the Potomac, 
are monstrous hives of men, needing infinite quan- 
tities of pork and beans, wearing out infinite 
stacks of quartermasters' clothing, and covering an 
immeasurable space of country. They have, how- 
ever, but few individual adventures, but few rapid 
transitions from scene to scene ; and the men who 
composed them were brought but little into con- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 377 

tact with any of the Southern people residing on 
their own farms, as thej lived before the war. 
In the Shenandoah and Kanawha valleys, on the 
contrary, every movement had the swift vibrations 
of a shaken kaleidoscope ; forays, surprises, and 
feats of individual prowess or adventure were the 
order of the day ; and love-making in the towns 
through which our banners and those of the 
rebels fluctuated in alternate waves, was a regular 
business with the soldiers on both sides — in which, 
truth to say, both seemed to become most perfect 
proficients under the tutelage of such able and 
charming mistresses as those valleys yield. 

In another page of these Eecollections, but not 
as a continuation of the Yalley Eaid, we shall 
describe the country from Gauley Bridge to Par- 
kersburgh — the great oil, salt, and coal producing 
region of "West Virginia and Ohio — in which Gen. 
Averell, Colonel Yance, the writer, and many 
others who took part in the expedition we have 
just described, now hold landed interests very 
large, and — as the writer fondly hopes — ^yet to 
become very lucrative. In this connexion, too, 
will come in the history of the transfer of Hunter's 
command from Parkersburgh back to Harper's 
Perry, to resist, or try to capture General Early's 
column of invasion — the last rebel forces ever 
seen on Maryland soil ; together with secret dis- 
patches from General Hunter, President Lincoln, 



878 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 

General Grant, Secretary Stanton, and General 
Halleck, throwing much light over that still mys- 
terious episode in our more recent history, and 
none of which have ever yet been published. 
Meanwhile let us conclude by advising all lovers 
of the picturesque, while there is yet time this 
Fall, and while the forests wear their richest and 
most varied verdure, to hasten up the Kanawha 
to the Hawk's Nest, where the last pages of this 
hurried and imperfect, but honest history may be 
supposed to be written. Here, outlying on a vast 
ledge of rock, they will look down over a sheer 
descent of fifteen hundred feet — the rock-base on 
which they rest forming the apex of a right-angled 
triangle, the sidQS of which are sharp precipitous 
mountains covered from ridge to foot with all the 
foliage of the forest, and "with the dark, wild foam- 
ing waters of the New River or Green River, as 
it is variously styled, plunging on in mad and 
roaring race beneath them — the mountain-echoes 
multiplying and thunder-toning all the chafings 
and many- voiced leaps of the imprisoned stream, 
and the overhanging mountains for ever gloriously 
mirrored in the deep, swift, and narrow channel 
through which — striking against the foot of the 
Hawk's Nest, and then glancing sharply off— this 
impetuous river rushes to join the Gauley, a few 
miles further down; these united streams there- 
after forming the bright Kanawha. 

31^77 -2X 



